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MR DARWIN AND THE EARTH WORM.

When our distinguished countryman, Mr Darwin, devotes a whole and interesting volume to an explanation of our indebtedness in the world to the natural operation and instinct of the common earth worm, we may forgive the Frenchman for trying to discover our own feminine place in nature. But Mr Darwin does not commit himself to a theory till he has devoted many years to constant experimental investigations in order to prove its truth, and now when he tells us that the despised earth worm is our greatest agriculturalist, and that the vegetable mould which covers the face of the earth is really made from leaves and other debris by these little creatures, we are ready to believe him, for he shows us the why and the wherefore. This volume of Mr Darwin is by no means the least interesting of his valuable series of works. I am happy to see it completing a long row of them on my book-shelf.