The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits

"It’s a wonderful Victorian title. Of course his most famous book is On The Origin of Species and that is actually rather hard work because he was desperately trying to persuade people of his thesis and he collected an absolute mountain of data and you had to wade through this stuff. But he was actually rather a good writer if he was able to let his hair down. His account of the Voyage of the Beagle is lovely. It is a sort of travel book full of derring-do and wonderful adventures. But I love this book about earthworms, which wasn’t published until 1896, because it just shows what a lovely naturalist he was. Let me read you one paragraph from page 26 on the observations and habits of worms: ‘Worms do not possess any sense of hearing. They took not the least notice of the shrill of a metal whistle which was repeatedly sounded near them. Nor did they hear the deepest and loudest tones of a bassoon. They were indifferent to shouts if care was taken that the breath did not strike them. When placed on a table near a piano which was played as loudly as possible, they remained perfectly quiet.’ But he goes on to say that if you put them on the piano they jumped like mad because they could feel the vibrations. And can you imagine getting your kids to play the bassoon to an earthworm? It really is wonderful. Anyone could do that – you could do that now with children in primary school but the fact is it was the great Charles Darwin who actually did it. So it is a really delightful book. It is not a ground-breaking popular science book but it is a book I am so pleased to have. He was above all a naturalist who loved looking at nature and thinking about it and observing and maybe doing some little experiments and he didn’t want all the furore that was caused by his great thesis. He hated that and was only too glad to hand over to Huxley to defend him."