My dear M^r Darwin,

When you see my hand writing you will have guessed at once that it comes to thank you for your book upon the action of Earthworms, which I finished reading through last night with manifold pleasure & instruction.¹ How many things I have learnt from it, previously rather seen than observed or understood!— During these damp mornings the entire surface of my lawn is literally studded with castings, flat circular saucers, and open holes, but few inches from one another—the widest not more than a foot,—mostly from one to four inches apart. Each one of these, I suppose, represents a worm and its burrow. You prove that worms bring up much earth from considerable depths below; but these castings are evidently of the same mould as the surface of the ground; and therefore will have been all collected from the top near the opening of the burrows, swallowed, lubricated in the intestines, brought up again and discharged, from the mouth, I conclude, just over the burrow. As such a prodigious number of worms thus live so close to one another, must they not have a certain number of underground chambers where they live in families together, and produce their offspring? The young ones must be born underground, and each one make a fresh burrow for himself from below upwards— As far as I have ever been able to see no worm that gets completely out of his hole on to the surface of the ground ever gets back into it again, or into any other burrow. Do they ever go into the earth head downwards and tail upwards? or remain there in that position? If the enormous numbers of worms who live on my lawn took their castings largely from excavations much below the surface, instead of near it, the level of the lawn must, one should think, subside partially here and there; but I cannot make out positively whether mine does so or not.— I was about to ask you some things about the “ridges on hill sides”,² which I have so frequently observed about the south downs and elsewhere, but my conscience orders me to spare you any such infliction; at least for the present.

Now I hope to have some agreeable news about yourself—that you are enjoying rest and health after your last labours, undisturbed by any outward influence—ill-conditioned books, meetings, speeches, or politics. By the bye I dare say you read L^d. Derby’s article in the XIX. Century for this month.³ It left somehow a sort of depressing impression upon me. I do not see the advantage, after the Land Bill has been passed, of setting out in stately form all the arguments which an able intellect can suggest against the chance of its working successfully. But to be sure the lord of 63,000, acres cannot be expected to remain entirely free from all feudal influences. Still that sort of writing, like L^d Salisbury’s speeches, seems to afford great aids to M^r. Parnell.—⁴

Please to present my Compliments to M^rs. Darwin, and believe me to be | Very sincerely yours | Anthony Rich.