The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms Illustrated eBook Charles Darwin
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The share which worms have taken in the formation of the layer of vegetable mould, which covers the whole surface of the land in every moderately humid country, is the subject of the present volume. This mould is generally of a blackish colour and a few inches in thickness. In different districts it differs but little in appearance, although it may rest on various subsoils. The uniform fineness of the particles of which it is composed is one of its chief characteristic features; and this may be well observed in any gravelly country, where a recently-ploughed field immediately adjoins one which has long remained undisturbed for pasture, and where the vegetable mould is exposed on the sides of a ditch or hole. The subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim “de minimis non curat lex,” does not apply to science. Even Élie de Beaumont, who generally undervalues small agencies and their accumulated effects, remarks [2] “La couche très-mince de la terre végétale est un monument d’une haute antiquité, et, par le fait de sa permanence, un objet digne d’occuper le géologue, et capable de lui fournir des remarques intéressantes.” Although the superficial layer of vegetable mould as a whole no doubt is of the highest antiquity, yet in regard to its permanence, we shall hereafter see reason to believe that its component particles are in most cases removed at not a very slow rate, and are replaced by others due to the disintegration of the underlying materials.
As I was led to keep in my study during many months worms in pots filled with earth, I became interested in them, and wished to learn how far they acted consciously, and how much mental power they displayed. I was the more desirous to learn something on this head, as few observations of this kind have been made, as far as I know, on animals so low in the scale of organization and so poorly provided with sense-organs, as are earth-worms.
In the year 1837, a short paper was read by me before the Geological Society of London, [3] “On the Formation of Mould,” in which it was shown that small fragments of burnt marl, cinders, &c., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows, were found after a few years lying at the depth of some inches beneath the turf, but still forming a layer. This apparent sinking of superficial bodies is due, as was first suggested to me by Mr. Wedgwood of Maer Hall in Staffordshire, to the large quantity of fine earth continually brought up to the surface by worms in the form of castings. These castings are sooner or later spread out and cover up any object left on the surface. I was thus led to conclude that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canals of worms. Hence the term “animal mould” would be in some respects more appropriate than that commonly used of “vegetable mould.”
The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms Illustrated eBook Charles Darwin
the text refers to figures that are not included in the text but are displayed in "look inside" giving the buyer a misinformed idea of what will be received. the accompanying photo which is in the "look inside" is actually NOT in the book. I returned the book and will continue looking for a copy with the figures as part of the text. Moreover, the table of contents indicates the book is 326 pages but the publisher's note indicates that this book has less content.Product details
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The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms Illustrated eBook Charles Darwin Reviews
I have been looking forward to reading this book for many years and was extremely disappointed with this copy. With no publishers information available except city and date of print, this is very clearly an illegal printing. The formatting is nonexistent - page numbers are listed IN TEXT, often in the middle of a paragraph, and chapter headings are almost indistinguishable from the text itself. Again, very disappointed in this print.
The Forgotten Books reprint of this book has a big drawback it is incomplete. The book stops on pg 262, just a couple paragraphs into Chapter VI. An incomplete sentence at the end of the page dangles and on the back of that page a barcode indicates that was all that was printed in the book. The positive thing I could say is that the font for this edition is quite big and there aren't any distracting marks or blurry words that were reproduced when the facsimile edition was copied. However, Forgotten Books has reproduced an edition that is unacceptable.
Darwin gets a 5, the printing gets a 1/2 a star.
The actual writing by Darwin is excellent. He is a thoughtful and thorough writer who manages to entertain even in a subject as seemingly dull as worms. But... this book is a dreadful reprint. No page numbers, no contents, NONE of the figures reprinted, and the entire thing is done in the tiniest print imaginable. A horrible job by the printers.
I think it's wonderful that I can read Darwin's words. I am thrilled he spent so much time studying worms. However, no diagrams, drawings or ANY illustrations of any kind make this book very incomplete. I have tried to reference separately with minimal success. Very disappointing.
Charles Darwin's name is so firmly linked with evolution that it is often forgotten that he was interested in specifics of biology. For instance, while he was fretting for seventeen years over whether to publish about evolution, he was busy investigating barnacles. He was to publish an authoritative work on them. He also wrote about the geology he had seen on his travels in the _Beagle_, and did experiments on whether eggs or seeds could travel the oceans to get to new lands. He was constantly busy on other projects, constantly enquiring and doing his own research simply because he had an exemplary curiosity. That his curiosity would fix upon lowly earthworms might seem a condescension from the man who had the great idea that is the principle of all biology, but Darwin thought earthworms were important. "Worms have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose," he writes in _The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits_, which was published in 1881, Darwin's last book (he wanted to get out his book on earthworms, he joked, "before joining them"). For this sesquicentennial of Darwin's birth, I wanted not to read his most influential works again, but to take up _Worms_ just to listen to Darwin the natural historian writing about a subject he obviously loved and which can never inspire condemnation from religious enthusiasts. The book is a delight. Always serious, and often with the stuffiness that is simply to be expected from scientific writing of the nineteenth century, Darwin is keen on earthworm behavior, even making informed speculation on earthworm mentality. The earthworm may be tiny, but Darwin brings up the next fact or the next experiment, one after another, to show how worms have affected geology, his other great interest.
Earthworms had been a longstanding interest for Darwin. In 1837, he had read to the Geological Society of London his paper on the role of earthworms in soil formation. Some of the experiments, too, required long times of monitoring. Darwin had a field near his home spread with broken chalk in 1842, and dug it up 29 years later to see what had happened to the chalk layer. The chalk nodules did subside under the mould cast up by the worms, at a rate he could calculate at 0.22 inches per year. In a larger view, Darwin looked at the geological processes which worms cause, the denudation (removal of disintegrated rocks and soil to lower levels). The land may be sculpted by the sea, volcanoes, and earthquakes, but the little earthworms played a big role, too. Darwin had pots of earthworms so he could experiment on them. They have no eyes, and he thought that they could not respond to light, but found that somehow worms knew to withdraw from a bright light shone for a long while. They do not have any sense of hearing, as this whimsical passage makes clear "They took not the least notice of the shrill notes from a metal whistle, which was repeatedly sounded near them; nor did they of the deepest and loudest notes of a bassoon." They dug burrows and pulled leaves into them, and Darwin was astonished to find that they did this in a methodical and even intelligent way. He gives a table of how leaves of different plants or triangles of paper were drawn into earthworm holes, statistically showing that the worms deliberately went for the narrow part of the object to pull in, rather than trying to get a blunter part in first. He gives evidence that although pulling leaves into a burrow might be instinctually commanded, the earthworms are capable of showing some degree of intelligence in how they orient the leaves for the job.
Among Darwin's other great gifts was his ability to imagine changes over geological time. Evolution is mentioned exactly once in this volume. He takes note of the words of a critic who could not believe that earthworms had done as much work as Darwin proposed because they were too small and weak and the work was too stupendous. "Here we have an instance," said Darwin, "of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause, which has often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the case of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution." Clearly Darwin had no such inability. I have no doubt that researchers have since his time brought out bigger and more specialized volumes on the earthworm, and that earthworm science has greatly advanced in the century-and-a-quarter since this book came out. This one, however, is a delightful marker of the beginning of the scientific valuation of the earthworm, and a reminder of the broad yet deep interests of its accomplished author.
[Warning This edition does not include the pictures to which the text repeatedly refers; they are, however, available on the internet.]
Not really a book as much as a extremely poor photocopy of the pages that were never reviewed for clarity. Half the pages are blackened out so that you cannot see any type - see photos.
DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION BY SCHOLAR SELECT. IS IT TERRIBLE. YOU ARE THROWING YOUR MONEY AWAY. IT IS WORTH ZERO STARS.
This edition is not useful for scholarly work. It has no page numbers, no table of contents, and no bibliographical information. Chapter headings are hard to find as thy do not start on top of a new page, nor are they in a different font. It is impossible to use a text like this. The publishers need to think again; I don't think should be selling a book of such a poor quality.
the text refers to figures that are not included in the text but are displayed in "look inside" giving the buyer a misinformed idea of what will be received. the accompanying photo which is in the "look inside" is actually NOT in the book. I returned the book and will continue looking for a copy with the figures as part of the text. Moreover, the table of contents indicates the book is 326 pages but the publisher's note indicates that this book has less content.
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