What’s behind Britain’s earthworm cataclysm?
Their numbers may have declined by a third
Charles Darwin liked an earthworm. What earthworms felt about Charles Darwin is less clear. For 40 years he studied them, thought about them and experimented on them. He exhaled on them to see if they disliked his breath (they didn’t) and held a poker to them to see if they minded the heat (they generally did). He wafted perfume and then paraffin in front of them, and he played them a whistle, a bassoon and the piano. They seemed nonplussed. He fed them mint (which they didn’t care for), cabbage (which they did) and other worms, halved (catholic in their tastes, they enjoyed their diet of worms).
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Wormageddon”
Britain May 25th 2024
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