Life in the Soil - Soil: Reflections on the Basis of our Existence - page 65

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Organised foragers. The fungi in the photo break down blocks of wood to gain access to energy.
Wood contains almost no nitrogen, so the fungi grow out of the blocks with their mycelia to fetch
nitrogen from elsewhere. The ability to source energy and nitrogen from different locations and
then transport these resources within the mycelium makes fungi superior to bacteria in soil with
uneven nutrient distribution
Fungal hyphae ( lower image ) are mostly hollow. The cell fluid lies in a thin film against the
walls. It is only in the tips, where the hyphae are most active, that the cells are completely full
of fluid. Many fungal hyphae have a granular surface due either to crystals formed by mineral
residues that the fungi have dissolved to access nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium, or
crystals formed to protect the hyphae from being eaten

After a while I began to grasp what he meant and gradually got into the music, my
footsteps and arms moving in time with the drums as my stiff, crane-like move-
ments gradually morphed into something suppler and more percussive. The drum-
beats pounded through my belly and into my arms and legs.
Suddenly I slipped over and felt something sticky underfoot: a squashed earth-
worm. My fellow dancers were also slipping over. I tried to save the worms by
throwing them away from the dance area so they could burrow back into the soil
where they belonged, and it occurred to me that the dancing feet had tricked the
worms into thinking it was pouring with rain. If water floods the soil's pores and
hollows, earthworms must tunnel to the surface to avoid drowning. They must
have been surprised to be greeted by hot sunshine and hopping human feet.
We regard earthworms as friendly creatures because they are so crucial to soil fer-
tility, and we are happy when we see them while digging in the garden and sad if we
accidently cut one in half. They are called angels of the soil in China for their abil-
ity to aerate the soil. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle likened them to intestines because
the soil passes through them as they eat their way through it. Charles Darwin, father
of the Theory of Evolution, spent much time studying earthworms and observed in
1837 that marlstone scattered on the fields as a soil conditioner ended up several
centimetres below ground within a few years. This, he suggested, was the work of
earthworms, though French scientists disputed the idea. Darwin continued to study
earthworms, especially during his later years, and in 1881—six months before his
death—he published his work on the species and its importance to soil formation.
The topic was a bestseller of its day, as popular as The Origin of Species . One rea-
son was Darwin's conclusion that earthworms were intelligent creatures, a view at
odds with the scientific consensus of the day. Worms were seen as slimy, repulsive
pests that ate seeds and ruined the soil for growers. Horticultural manuals of the day
described techniques for culling them by beating poles on the ground to entice them
to the surface. People were encouraged to go out at night with lanterns and to des-
patch them in the same way we do today with Spanish slugs.
Darwin noted that earthworms were active at night and observed how they
dragged leaves and other matter with them into their underground tunnels. He
credited them with intelligence after watching how they pulled leaves with the
sharp side first. Scientists today would disagree with Darwin that this behaviour
indicated intelligence but would doubtless concur that it is fascinating how the ani-
mals ease their workload in this way. Darwin also advanced different theories on