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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Edward Parfitt   31 October 1881

Devon & Exeter Institution

Oct 31st. | 1881

Dear Sir

I have just had the pleasure of reading your most instructive and excellent work on the “Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms”.1 You will I hope pardon me for making one suggestion, at page 63. quoting Hoffmester as to the use of stopping up the holes to prevent the entrance of Scolopendra’s entering them2   Hoffmester must I think have forgotten that the Scolopendras are nocturnal animals as well as worms, and it is at night that the holes are open and not closed.3 The holes are closed in the day and not in the night, and so far as my observation go it is to prevent evaporation, that the holes are stopped up in the day time, as worms cannot work except at great expendidature of the glairy exhudation from their bodies in dry wether the stopping of the holes keep up a certain degree of humidity necessary to the well being of the worms, and reducing the mucous exhudation to a minimum. I have noticed worms in dry weather having been startled from their holes probably by a mole or the jarring of the ground, come out and get so thoroughly exhausted of the mucous that they have died before they could again make way into the ground.

I am dear Sir | yours very truly | Edward Parfitt

C. Darwin Esqr

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘(good)’ pencil
End of letter:

0.45 1. 3 3.60 3)8.15 6 2 60 120 15 3)135 (45. 12 15 blue ink

Footnotes

See Earthworms, pp. 62–3. CD had referred to Werner Hoffmeister’s Die bis jetzt bekannten Arten aus der Familie der Regenwürmer (The presently known species from the family of earthworms; Hoffmeister 1845, p. 17). The centipede genus Scolopendra formerly included many species now classified within other genera; it is now reserved for very large, mostly tropical species.
The vast majority of centipedes are nocturnal. CD amended later printings of Earthworms, noting, ‘It is not probable that the plugs or piles of stones serve to conceal the burrows from scolopendras, which, according to Hoffmeister, are the bitterest enemies of worms, or from the large species of Carabus which attack them ferociously, for these animals are nocturnal, and the burrows are opened at night’ (Earthworms (fifth thousand), pp. 62–3).

Bibliography

Earthworms: The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms: with observations on their habits. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1881.

Hoffmeister, Werner. 1845. Die bis jetzt bekannten Arten aus der Familie der Regenwürmer. Als Grundlage zu einer Monographie dieser Familie. Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg and Son.

Summary

Corrects Werner Hoffmeister, cited in Earthworms, p. 63: earthworms do not block their holes to keep out Scolopendras but to prevent evaporation.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13445
From
Edward Parfitt
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Devon and Exeter Institution
Source of text
DAR 174: 15
Physical description
ALS 3pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13445,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13445.xml

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