. The apparatus in
Fig. 28 (two lots). Wash bottle containing lime water (Fig. 27, also
p. 19)._

In digging a garden a number of little animals are found, such as
earthworms, beetles, ants, centipedes, millipedes and others. There
are also some very curious forms of vegetable life. By carefully
looking about it is not difficult to find patches of soil covered with
a greenish slimy growth; they are found best under bushes where the
soil is not disturbed, or else where the soil has been pressed down by
a footmark and not touched since. Any good soil left undisturbed for a
time shows this growth.

Put some fresh moist garden soil into a bottle and cork it up tightly
so that it keeps moist. Write the date on the bottle and then leave it
in the light where you can easily see it. After a time--sometimes a
long, sometimes a shorter time--the soil becomes covered with a slimy
growth, greenish in colour, mingled here and there with reddish brown.
The longer the {54} soil is left the better. Often after several
months something further happens; little ferns begin to grow and they
live a very long time indeed. There is at Rothamsted a bottle of soil
that was put up just like this as far back as 1874. For a number of
years past a beautiful fern has been growing inside the bottle, and
even now it is very healthy and vigorous. If, instead of being kept
moist, the rich garden soil is left in a dry shed during the whole of
the winter so that it gradually loses its moisture, it will generally
show quite a lot of white fluffy growth.

All of these living things are very wonderful, and some, especially
earthworms, are very useful to gardeners and farmers.

After a shower of rain look carefully in the garden or else on a lawn,
common, or pasture field where the grass is closely grazed by cattle or
does not naturally grow long, and you will find numbers of tiny heaps
of soil scattered about. Carefully brush away a heap and a little hole
is seen, now hit the ground near it a few times with a stick or stamp
on it with your foot and the worm, if he is near the top, comes up.
When he is safely out of the way dig carefully down with a knife or
trowel so as to examine the hole or "burrow." At the top you generally
find it lined with pieces of grass or leaves that the worm has pulled
in; lower down the lining comes to an end, but the colour of the burrow
is redder than that of the rest of the soil wherever the soil has a
green