{"id":11736,"date":"2024-05-02T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=11736"},"modified":"2024-04-20T03:25:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T03:25:34","slug":"how-a-little-known-clergyman-studying-worms-by-candlelight-in-the-1700s-inspired-charles-darwin-but-didnt-get-the-credit-he-deserved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/how-a-little-known-clergyman-studying-worms-by-candlelight-in-the-1700s-inspired-charles-darwin-but-didnt-get-the-credit-he-deserved\/","title":{"rendered":"How a little-known clergyman studying worms by candlelight in the 1700s inspired Charles Darwin \u2013 but didn\u2019t get the credit he deserved"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n Kevin Richard Butt<\/a>, University of Central Lancashire<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n
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When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every few years through the bodies of worms. The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man\u2019s inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed by earthworms \u2013 Charles Darwin<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Charles Darwin is one of the greatest scientists that ever lived. His evolutionary theory opened up a whole new world of scientific understanding. But he was also a meticulous observer of some of the smallest, and seemingly insignificant, elements of the natural world \u2013 worms.<\/p>\n\n

Earthworms were one of his long-term interests. So much so that in 1881, the year before his death, he wrote a book<\/a> \u2013 \u201cThe formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms, with observations on their habits\u201d. The book (which, for ease, I\u2019ll refer to as Worms) brought together many decades of observation, experimentation, and theorising. It sold phenomenally well (thousands of copies within weeks of publication) perhaps because of its quirky topic or due to the growing interest in gardening at that time. <\/p>\n\n

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This article is part of Conversation Insights<\/em><\/strong>\n
The Insights team generates long-form journalism<\/a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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In Worms, Darwin wrote that: \u201cIt may be doubted if there are many other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organised creatures.\u201d Quite a statement.<\/p>\n\n

But Worms totally changed the public perception of this group of animals, as it looked at what we now call earthworm ecology and explored their potential intelligence. I obtained a secondhand copy of Worms 30 years ago and was inspired to begin a journey that would take me to the very places where Darwin\u2019s observations were made. <\/p>\n\n

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\n A portrait of Charles Darwin, circa 1870s-1880s.<\/span>\n Shutterstock\/Everett Collection<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

To the casual observer, earthworms and soil may seem boring at first, but they are crucial to life on this planet. As the journalist and ecologist George Monbiot wrote<\/a>: \u201cBeneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It\u2019s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food<\/a>, yet we scarcely know it. Soil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

And the guardians of the soil are the earthworms; their importance is not to be underestimated. As ecosystem service providers, earthworms perform vital activities such as soil formation and enrichment, by passing mineral components and organic matter through their guts to produce castings, a fine intimately mixed soil crumb structure, ideal for plant growth.<\/p>\n\n

Without earthworms, plants wouldn\u2019t grow in many soils, or their growth would be restricted. Earthworms also allow aeration of the soil through their burrowing, something vital to plant roots and other soil organisms.<\/p>\n\n

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\n Earthworm and castings on a lawn.<\/span>\n Shutterstock\/Harusukae<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

Equally, as ecosystem engineers, earthworms change the environment in which they live to suit their everyday requirements. The scale at which earthworms operate means that their ecosystem engineering activities went unnoticed for millennia but were highlighted and initially quantified by Darwin.<\/p>\n\n

I was lucky enough to have a career as an ecologist and have even repeated some of Darwin\u2019s earthworm research in his own \u201cback garden\u201d within the grounds of Down House<\/a> in Kent over the past 20 years. <\/p>\n\n

My investigations have helped me understand just what a great scientist Darwin was, and just how amazing worms are. Indeed, I was even inspired to write my own book, Worm<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

But my extensive research also reminded me of an often overlooked ecologist who was carrying out experiments about a century before Darwin \u2013 someone who Darwin knew of but declined to give proper credit to. That man was a country clergyman called Gilbert White.<\/p>\n\n

The findings of both White and Darwin are now fully appreciated by earthworm ecologists, but the writings of the latter in Worms have overshadowed the lesser-known and almost hidden account of White.<\/p>\n\n

Who was Gilbert White?<\/h2>\n\n

White was not a trained scientist. He was a country clergyman from Hampshire. But he made extensive observations of the natural world back in the 1770s. <\/p>\n\n

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\n An ink and pen portait of Gilbert White.<\/span>\n Gilbert White’s House & Gardens<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

Rather than study dead specimens, as many \u201cnaturalists\u201d before him, he observed plants and animals in their natural settings and can be considered as one of the very early ecologists in Britain.<\/p>\n\n

White was able to look at the habitat level and did not simply focus on species in isolation. He also considered how humans interact with nature. His observations were usually very accurate, but because of the time at which he lived, he was not fully aware of certain phenomena such as bird migration, although, according to his records, he suspected such things occurred.<\/p>\n\n

Through his writing, many biologists were given an insight into the perception of the natural world before the advent of great technological assistance. He was a great observer of birds and without binoculars, for example, was the first to distinguish<\/a> between the chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler as separate species, based largely on their different songs.<\/p>\n\n

White\u2019s observations included phenological (seasonal) data, such as bud-burst and flowering of common plants, which he recorded in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne<\/a> \u2013 a collection of letters to two great scientists of the time, Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington.<\/p>\n\n

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\n Title page of the Natural History of Selborne.<\/span>\n British Library<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

I bought a copy of this book as a biology undergraduate, about 45 years ago. Even now it is a great historical record of the development of ecology as a science. It has had more than 200 editions and is reputed to be<\/a> \u2013 after the Bible, the works of Shakespeare and Pilgrim\u2019s Progress \u2013 the fourth most published book in the English Language. It was published in 1789 and since then has never been out of print<\/a>. It has been translated into numerous other languages, including a German version as early as 1794, and has also influenced a diverse group of writers<\/a>, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, W H Auden, right up to Sir David Attenborough. The book consists of 110 letters spanning 20 years.<\/p>\n\n

One such letter, to Barrington, dated May 20, 1777, specifically on the activities of earthworms is strikingly pertinent. He wrote: <\/p>\n\n

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Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them \u2026 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

This was in reference to their important place in food chains with carnivores, herbivores, omnivores and, in the case of worms, detritivores<\/a>. As earthworm bodies are around 70% protein (much circular and longitudinal muscle used for movement), they fall prey to a host of birds; from blackbirds to tawny owls, and mammals, including moles, badgers, shrews, foxes, and even other invertebrates including predatory beetles and flatworms.<\/p>\n\n

In the same letter, White continued:<\/p>\n\n

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\u2026 worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers and lumps of earth called worm-casts, which being their excrement is a fine manure for grain and grass. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

It is quite remarkable that here, from writings of nearly 250 years ago, White refers to many activities of earthworms (burrow formation, dead organic matter incorporation, cast production and nutrient release) that we, as scientists and gardeners, now take for granted and utilise or continue to investigate in greater detail. <\/p>\n\n

In many aspects, White was ahead of his time scientifically and was specifically a great observer of the natural world. He also realised that earthworms change the form of the land itself. As he continued: \u201cWorms probably provide new soils for hills and slopes where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably to avoid being flooded.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Here, White was referring to the larger scale change of landform that he conceived earthworms were able to affect.<\/p>\n\n

Examining the soil by candlelight<\/h2>\n\n

In another (undated) letter to Pennant, White wrote:<\/p>\n\n

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Hedge-sparrows \u2026 in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass plot on any mild winter\u2019s night.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

This showed that White even made observations in the dark and recorded earthworm behaviour at the soil surface (likely of Lumbricus terrestris<\/em>, the lob worm or nightcrawler, which feeds and mates on the soil surface with its tail remaining in its burrow). <\/p>\n\n

White must have also witnessed this mating behaviour and was aware of the hermaphroditic nature of worms, as he recorded:<\/p>\n\n

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Worms work most in the spring; but \u2026 are out every mild night in the winter, as any person may be convinced that will take the pains to examine his grass-plots with a candle; are hermaphrodites, and much addicted to venery [mating], and consequently very prolific.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

White also wrote that \u201ca good monography of worms would afford much entertainment and information at the same time and would open a large and new field in natural history\u201d. He was so right, but it would be another century before such a book (Darwin\u2019s Worms) appeared \u2013 and sadly, the importance of his own work would hardly be mentioned in it.<\/p>\n\n

Crediting White\u2019s discoveries<\/h2>\n\n

Darwin has been quoted as saying<\/a> that he \u201cstood on the shoulders\u201d of White, and went on \u201ca pilgrimage to Selborne\u201d as a young man in June 1857. <\/p>\n\n

And Darwin clearly referred to the work of White in Worms. For example, when discussing lob worm behaviour, he stated \u201c\u2026 under ordinary circumstances healthy worms never, or very rarely, completely leave their burrows at night; but this is an error, as White of Selborne long ago knew\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

Nevertheless, Darwin did not give a full account of the many particular and relevant earthworm observations of White, relating to their ecosystem services and their vital roles in food chains and turnover of soil and behaviour at the soil surface. <\/p>\n\n

This suggests that Darwin may not have wanted to acknowledge that someone had beaten him \u2013 by a century \u2013 to some very important earthworm-related scientific findings. <\/p>\n\n

Other researchers have been even less kind when it comes to Darwin\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n\n

In the 1941 Penguin edition of White\u2019s Natural History, editor James Fisher wrote in a note to White\u2019s letter to Barrington: \u201c104 years after this letter was written, Darwin\u2019s The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms was published, and did indeed open a large and new field in natural history. Through some error (for he must have known of these wise observations of White) Darwin did not quote this letter, though it seems pretty certain that it must have been among the stimuli which caused him to take up his investigations of these interesting and valuable creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

And in a paper<\/a> specifically on \u201cGilbert White and Darwin\u2019s worms\u201d, the scientist Gerhard Cadee wrote: \u201cI am more inclined to think Darwin purposely omitted White.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

A biography of Darwin<\/a> also shows that, even as a student, he possessed a copy of White\u2019s book (which, it must be remembered covered many aspects of natural history, not only earthworms). He used this to assist watching and identifying bird behaviours as he improved his ornithological skills.<\/p>\n\n

The findings of both White and Darwin are now fully appreciated by earthworm ecologists, but I think the Hampshire clergyman deserves a bit more credit.<\/p>\n\n

So, I believe it worth noting that White was the first to record that earthworms:<\/p>\n\n