Dear Sir

I hope you will excuse my having delayed for so long a time the acknowledgment of your interesting work on Earth-Worms.¹ The fact is I was desirous to test by myself the chapter on ledges of earth on hill-sides, a formation which is extremely common on all mountain-slopes round this city.² It is here a common opinion to attribute them to the wanderings of cattle; but this never could enter my mind, as there is really no cattle wandering about on these slopes. However I have not been able to make any excursion for several months, on account of ill health, or rather a somewhat dangerous condition of my circulatory system, which at the slightest bodily exertion gets into an extraordinary state of excitement. But this annoying state of things will once come to an end, so that I may be able to search for earthworms on the slopes.

To-day I send you a little bottle with the common earth worm of our gardens. I think it must be a Perichaete, but I have no works to make out the species. Would you be so kind as to forward some specimens to any one who knows these animals, so that I may get the name? The animal, when alive, displays a remarkable iridescence, and is very lively when being taken out of the earth and placed for inst on a dry flat stone.³ It twists then violently its fore and hind parts, and produces thereby a jerking motion. They go very deep in some places. I have since changed my residence, but find plenty of them in my new one, where they bring up a yellowish earth quite different from the upper layer, which is very dark and one meter and a half deep, so they must needs come from a greater depth still.

With the expression of my sincerest admiration I am, | dear Sir, yours very truly | A Ernst