Our current earthworms arrived with European settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries, as worms or eggs in soil clinging to the roots of plants brought by the colonists or in mud stuck to shoes.

Occasionally, one lifted its massive head to watch my passing, its big empty eyes staring without interest while it chewed thoughtfully on tufts of grass uprooted with soil still clinging to them.

The glorious produce includes slender-and-straight cucumbers, verdant spinach, with soil still clinging to perfectly aligned, red-tinged roots, and flawless fruit, boxed and beribboned for gifts (yes, that 10,000-yen melon is the equivalent of about $95 at 109 yen to the dollar).

Rinse the mushrooms under running water to rid them of any soil still clinging to them.

Photographs seized in a 1995 police raid on the warehouse of one dealer, Giacomo Medici - who has already been convicted - show Italian soil still clinging to vases now in American collections, including the Metropolitan (which appears now to be negotiating the return of pillaged works to Italy).

Conifers that had succumbed to the quaking earth lay prostrate on the ground and she skirted craters left by the circular tangle of shallow roots - moist soil and rocks still clinging to their exposed undersides.

For I saw the mortality in him, the deep wrinkles of his skin, the painful flutter of his gaze, a thin layer of soil clinging to him all over in the natural moisture of his mortal skin.

One of them was perfectly dry, with bits of dried soil clinging to it, and the other was damp.

There was no particle of soil clinging to the metal.