Abstract
ON December 20, 1842, three months after taking up residence at Downe, Darwin spread “a quantity of broken chalk over a part of a field near my house” with a view “of observing at some future period to what depth it would become buried”. Twenty-nine years later-1871-he had a trench dug across this part of the field ; “a line of white nodules could be traced on both sides of the trench at a depth of 7 inches from the surface.... Another part of this same field was mossy and it was thought that sifted coal cinders would improve the pasture, a thick layer was spread over this part either in 1842 or 1843, and another layer some years afterwards”. In 1871 a trench was dug revealing a line of cinders at a depth of 7 inches and another parallel line at 5½ inches”. (These citations are taken from pp. 139, 141 of the 1881 edition of Darwin's book, “The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms” ; in the remainder of this article, I shall cite merely the page number. Darwin began observations on the formation of mould in 1837 while staying at Maer, Staffs, the home of Josiah Wedgwood -his uncle (and future father-in-law). His observations of that period were communicated to the Geological Society of London on November 1, 1837.)
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KEITH, A. A POSTSCRIPT TO DARWIN'S “FORMATION OF VEGETABLE MOULD THROUGH THE ACTION OF WORMS”. Nature 149, 716–720 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149716a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149716a0