The Earth Moved
On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms
by
Amy Stewart
Charming little book by a gardener who developed an interest in earthworms. She even had a worm mini-farm on her back porch; the way she described it made me want one. It consisted of three or four stacked boxes, with probably a latticework on the bottom of each so the worms could travel freely from box to box. She fed them kitchen scraps. When it was time to harvest the compost that the earthworms
so obligingly created, she'd rotate the boxes and wait until the worms had vacated the topmost one, then dump out the contents and start afresh. I may have gotten this description a bit off-kilter--to get it told right, read her book.
I never knew that Darwin's last book was The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Actions of Worms. Reading her description of it has made me want to read it for myself. I'm holding back until I see how long it is.
Amy Stewart mixes personal anecdotes with serious research here, and does it quite beautifully. Great work!
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