recur. They also consume a large number of half-decayed leaves of
all kinds, excepting a few which have an unpleasant taste or are
too tough for them; likewise petioles, peduncles, and decayed
flowers. But they will also consume fresh leaves, as I have found
by repeated trials. According to Morren {18} they will eat
particles of sugar and liquorice; and the worms which I kept drew
many bits of dry starch into their burrows, and a large bit had its
angles well rounded by the fluid poured out of their mouths. But
as they often drag particles of soft stone, such as of chalk, into
their burrows, I feel some doubt whether the starch was used as
food. Pieces of raw and roasted meat were fixed several times by
long pins to the surface of the soil in my pots, and night after
night the worms could be seen tugging at them, with the edges of
the pieces engulfed in their mouths, so that much was consumed.
Raw fat seems to be preferred even to raw meat or to any other
substance which was given them, and much was consumed. They are
cannibals, for the two halves of a dead worm placed in two of the
pots were dragged into the burrows and gnawed; but as far as I
could judge, they prefer fresh to putrid meat, and in so far I
differ from Hoffmeister.

Leon Fredericq states {19} that the digestive fluid of worms is of
the same nature as the pancreatic secretion of the higher animals;
and this conclusion agrees perfectly with the kinds of food which
worms consume. Pancreatic juice emulsifies fat, and we have just
seen how greedily worms devour fat; it dissolves fibrin, and worms
eat raw meat; it converts starch into grape-sugar with wonderful
rapidity, and we shall presently show that the digestive fluid of
worms acts on starch. {20} But they live chiefly on half-decayed
leaves; and these would be useless to them unless they could digest