VI. A Long Speech by a Little Worm
All worms are of a higher order than the spiny-bodied animals such as the sea-urchin and the starfish. This is not exactly because some of them do such bright things as to build houses and hang front gates. It is because they are better made; and so, on the whole, are better fitted for their work in the world.
To be "better made," in the animal and vegetable world, means to have more parts, and each part fitted to do some special thing. The amoeba has no feet, no stomach—no anything, you might almost say. If it needs a foot it makes it. When it wants to eat, it wraps itself around its food and one side is as good as the other for this "made to order" stomach. When we get up to the sea cucumber we find a little animal that has lungs and nerves and a stomach. To be sure the sea cucumber throws away its stomach when it gets excited, and then grows a new one.
Now, when we come to the worms, we find still better machines for living. Take the worms you call "fish" worms. Their real name is earthworms, because they help to make the kind of earth in which plants grow best. You would be surprised to know in how many ways the earthworm is like you.
For one thing, he has a stomach; not a stomach like the amoeba, made and unmade all the time; nor like the sea cucumber to be thrown away whenever he gets peevish—but a real stomach that he keeps all the time, and uses for nothing else. His body, as you see, is a tube. Inside the tube is another tube. This inside tube is his stomach.
And he has blood, too. After the worm's food is digested it becomes blood, as our food does. He has the beginnings of hearts, also. I say hearts, because worms have several hearts. The earthworm, for instance, has five. They are simple little hearts that answer his purpose very well, but they wouldn't do for you at all. You must have one heart with several parts, instead of five simple hearts. Whenever Nature wants anything better done, you notice, she turns it over to one part that will give the whole of its mind to it.
The earthworm has one vein and one artery. Both are tubes like those that carry blood to and from your heart. One runs along his back, above his tube-like stomach. The other runs under his stomach The five little hearts connect these two blood vessels,
