Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once. So lie back,

adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath and off we go.

Tonight we're relaxing to a lesser known work by a very well known scientist.

We're reading the formation of I have very well known scientist.

We're reading the formation of vegetable mold

through the action of worms

with observations on their habits

by Charles Darwin,

L. L.D. F. R. S.

published by John Murray, Albemarle Street, London.

Let's begin.

Introduction.

The share which worms have taken in the formation of the layer of vegetable mold, which covers the whole surface of the

land in every moderately humid country, is the subject of the present volume.

This mold is generally of a blackish color and a few inches in thickness.

In different districts it differs but little in appearance, although it may rest on various

subsoils. The uniform fineness of the particles of which it is composed is one of

its chief characteristic features, and this may be well observed in any gravelly country,

where a recently plowed field immediately adjoins one which has long remained undisturbed for pasture and where the vegetable

mold is exposed on the sides of a ditch or hole.

The subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest, and the

maxim de minimis non-curadlex does not apply to science. Even Ali de Beau-Mond, who generally undervalues small agencies

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