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Thus even our reflections become bitter as we proceed, and we drop them to find solace in reading. Here we find sensation enough to suit the most voracious devourer of that ingredient in the strangest of all volumes –one wherein we should have thought that no sensation could be found.

The work by Darwin on the formation of "Vegetable Mould and the Earth-worm" is one of the most startling revelations of the all-wise provisions of nature that has ever appeared. Darwin, to whom every moment must be as precious as gold, has passed his days and nights ever since the year 1837 in studying the designs of Providence in the formation of the earth-worm, and has arrived as the astounding conviction of this despised creature being one of the most valuable agents in all creation, that without him the human race would lack food, for it is the earth-worm who turns and replenishes the soil, and renders it fit for the reception of the seed. Moreover, without the earth-worm we should have no ancient buildings to behold, for it is he who is commissioned to cover with dust and preserve from decay, by preventing the contact of the air with all the antique ruins which help us to understand the history of past ages. Times will soon be altered for the earth-worm, for although he proverbially turns when trampled on, yet as he is entirely defenceless, and sent into the world sans eyes, sans teeth, sans claws, sans everything, he has always been considered a doomed creature to be picked up by the early bird and crushed underfoot by the belated wanderer.