onion-bulb.

The edges of fresh or nearly fresh leaves affixed to the ground
were often nibbled by the worms; and sometimes the epidermis and
all the parenchyma on one side was gnawed completely away over a
considerable space; the epidermis alone on the opposite side being
left quite clean. The veins were never touched, and leaves were
thus sometimes partly converted into skeletons. As worms have no
teeth and as their mouths consist of very soft tissue, it may be
presumed that they consume by means of suction the edges and the
parenchyma of fresh leaves, after they have been softened by the
digestive fluid. They cannot attack such strong leaves as those of
sea-kale or large and thick leaves of ivy; though one of the latter
after it had become rotten was reduced in parts to the state of a
skeleton.

Worms seize leaves and other objects, not only to serve as food,
but for plugging up the mouths of their burrows; and this is one of
their strongest instincts. They sometimes work so energetically
that Mr. D. F. Simpson, who has a small walled garden where worms
abound in Bayswater, informs me that on a calm damp evening he
there heard so extraordinary a rustling noise from under a tree
from which many leaves had fallen, that he went out with a light
and discovered that the noise was caused by many worms dragging the
dry leaves and squeezing them into the burrows. Not only leaves,
but petioles of many kinds, some flower-peduncles, often decayed
twigs of trees, bits of paper, feathers, tufts of wool and horse-
hairs are dragged into their burrows for this purpose. I have seen
as many as seventeen petioles of a Clematis projecting from the
mouth of one burrow, and ten from the mouth of another. Some of