Abstract
Charles Darwin had a lifelong fascination with earthworms. In November 1837, the same month that he finished revising the diary of his voyage on the Beagle, he read a paper at the Geological Society of London on how "every particle of earth forming the bed from which the turf in old pasture land springs has passed through the intestines of worms." In his last book, Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (1881), Darwin returned to his unsung subterranean heroes and celebrated their inexhaustible work that makes the earth fertile. Worms not only prepare the ground for plants and seedlings, over time they bury and preserve objects that do not decay. They preserve the past and create conditions for future growth; they bury to renew; digest to restore.