Ɛpsilon

To Peter Price    [after 10 October 1881?]1

worms certainly do work at a depth of four or five feet from the surface, but only when the earth is damp, and the state of the pier could not be attributed to their action if the soil was dry.2

incomplete

1
The date is conjectured from the publication date of Earthworms, 10 October 1881 (Freeman 1977).
2
CD’s statement was quoted by Price in a talk, ‘The delapidation of one of the nave piers of Llandaff Cathedral through the action of earthworms’, given at a meeting of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society and reported in the Western Mail, 6 April 1883, p. 4. No other record of the talk has been found. Based on CD’s remark, Price concluded that ‘as the cathedral was in ruins, and exposed to rains for years, and the pier in question was 450 or 500 years old, the theory was a tenable one’ (ibid.).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13380F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13380F