Abstract
THE REV. H. FRIEND'S letter in NATURE of April 7 recalls an observation made towards the end of last November with respect to the death of worms. A shallow gutter or water-drain by the side of a road near Sidmouth had become filled with dead leaves (principally of Populus alba) during the late autumn. These by accumulation and pressure had formed a firm, compact bed in the drain. During a night at the end of November last we had exceptionally heavy rain, and the next morning, on passing along the road in the forenoon, my attention was immediately arrested by the number of worms (of several species) lying dead outside the shallow water-drain. In the space of about 20 ft. I counted upwards of a hundred worms. They had evidently crawled out from the bed of dead leaves to the firm surface of the road and died there. My conclusion was that they had crawled out from the gutter in a half-drowned condition and beyond the chance of recovery. A curious point was that they all (irrespective of size and species) appeared to have crawled to about the same distance, so that they formed a fairly even line running parallel with the gutter.
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HARRIS, G. Why do Worms Die?. Nature 107, 269 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107269c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107269c0
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