insect-like animals commonly known to gardeners, including the wood
lice that we call pill bugs because they roll up defensively into
hard armadillo-like shells, and the highly intrusive earwigs my
daughter calls pinch bugs. There are also numerous types of insect
larvae busily at work.

A person could spend their entire life trying to understand the
ecology of a single handful of humus-rich topsoil. For a century
now, numerous soil biologists have been doing just that and still
the job is not finished. Since gardeners, much less ordinary people,
are rarely interested in observing and naming the tiny animals of
the soil, especially are we disinterested in those who do no damage
to our crops, soil animals are usually delineated only by Latin
scientific names. The variations with which soil animals live, eat,
digest, reproduce, attack, and defend themselves fills whole
sections of academic science libraries.

During the writing of this book I became quite immersed in this
subject and read far more deeply into soil biology and microbiology
than I thought I ever would. Even though this area of knowledge has
amused me, I doubt it will entertain most of you. If it does, I
recommend that you first consult specialist source materials listed
in the bibliography for an introduction to a huge universe of
literature.

I will not make you yawn by mentioning long, unfamiliar Latin names.
I will not astonish you with descriptions of complex reproductive
methods and beautiful survival strategies. Gardeners do not really
need this information. But managing the earth so that soil animals
are helped and not destroyed is essential to good gardening. And