From Edward Parfitt   31 October 1881

Dear Sir

I have just had the pleasure of reading your most instructive and excellent work on the “Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms”.¹ You will I hope pardon me for making one suggestion, at page 63. quoting Hoffmester as to the use of stopping up the holes to prevent the entrance of Scolopendra’s entering them²   Hoffmester must I think have forgotten that the Scolopendras are nocturnal animals as well as worms, and it is at night that the holes are open and not closed.³ The holes are closed in the day and not in the night, and so far as my observation go it is to prevent evaporation, that the holes are stopped up in the day time, as worms cannot work except at great expendidature of the glairy exhudation from their bodies in dry wether the stopping of the holes keep up a certain degree of humidity necessary to the well being of the worms, and reducing the mucous exhudation to a minimum. I have noticed worms in dry weather having been startled from their holes probably by a mole or the jarring of the ground, come out and get so thoroughly exhausted of the mucous that they have died before they could again make way into the ground.

I am dear Sir | yours very truly | Edward Parfitt

C. Darwin Esq^r