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From Horatio Piggot   31 December 1881

20, Broadwater Down | Tunbridge Wells

31 Dec/81.

Dr Sir

I will endeavour during the course of the next Summer to forward you one of the Carnivora feeding on the Earth Worm. I consider it a larva State of a Beetle.1 The noise of suction in my judgment is not one proceeding from the Animal, but is the result of the business like way of making a tubular drain, and drawing themselves through it.

Last year I found the true wire worm fully developed dead, and on examination found that its death was caused by a parasite which turned out to be the larva of one of the Ichneumon flies, but I could get from British Museum no information.2 We had met with it before, and shall do so again:

At night time I have seen the true wireworm, three parts out of the ground, standing as it were upright, eating through stem of Carnation— The fact made a great impression upon me, as I did not think they left the ground during their five years penal servitude, but the Toad confirmed me in the observation as I have found his excrement with the true wireworm very distinctly visible imbeded in it—3

With reference to a remark in the review of your work to the effect that the Slug feeds on the Common Earth worm, I very much doubt whether he will touch a living one: I think as a general Rule a slug prefers decaying vegetable matter to the living—4 Unless it were for the help of the slug I do not know where we should be in getting rid of the refuse.— I think I can honestly say that with the exceptn. of the Primrose blossoms nibbled apparently wantonly,* by the large Red, & Black Slugs, we have never had any of our herbaceous plants injured by them, as the thrushes are my Friends—5 But in the Kitchen Garden where there are necessarily fewer Birds, from the want of cover for them, the slugs are obliged to be killed:

The way Slugs keep down the accumulation of Vegetable substances dying, and decaying, is something marvellous.

I am trying to find out what it is that causes the starch like stiffness of Everlasting Flowers as they are called   is it Silienus? secretion of plant.6

Apologising for troubling with this long letter.

Believe me | Yours very truly | Horatio Piggot

Chas Darwin Esq | &c &c &c

*lying down as thick as Sparrows pick and drop them

1
No previous correspondence from Piggot on this subject has been found. The order Carnivora comprises carnivorous placental mammals; Piggot presumably uses the term to refer to any carnivorous beetle species.
2
Wireworms are the larval forms of click beetles (family Elateridae); up to seventy species are found in Britain. Ichneumonidae is the family of ichneumon wasps, most of which are parasitic on various insect larvae.
3
Wireworms generally spend two to six years underground in their larval forms, where they feed on the roots of plants; the later larval stage is characterised by a hard-shelled body with three pairs of legs. The carnation is Dianthus caryophyllus.
4
The review mentioned has not been identified. Slugs are omnivorous and do eat earthworms.
5
The large black slug is Arion ater; the large red slug is Arion rufus. The two species hybridise in the wild, but the latter is less common except in the south of England. The primrose (Primula vulgaris) is also favoured by some bird species, as CD had noted (see Correspondence vol. 22, letter to Nature, 7 and 11 May [1874]). Sparrows (Passer domesticus) do eat primroses, while some species of thrush (especially the song thrush, Turdus philomelos) are known to eat snails and slugs.
6
The so-called everlasting flower is Xerochrysum bracteatum (family Asteraceae); it has colourful, papery bracts (often mistaken for petals, but the true flowers are in the central disc), which are actually composed of dead cells. The colours of the bracts never fade, making them popular florists’ flowers. The stiffness Piggot mentions results from the fact that the bract cells have secondary walls, usually only found in structural cells (sclerenchyma).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13589,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13589