BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 237 



No. 2160), although he has also a Podura ambulans, a circumstance 

 which may seem to throw Some doubt on the application I have made 

 of the other. Had Gervais taken the trouble to examine the description 

 of Linnaeus, with this result he would, perhaps, scarcely have thought 

 it worth while to provoke a controversy with Mr. Westwood in print 

 about priority of nomenclature in this case. 



" Secondly, he cites as another synonym Podura alba, Linnaeus (a 

 name not to be found in the 'Systema Naturae'), instead of P.fimetaria, 

 giving to Schranck the paternity of the trivial name Jimetaria, which 

 would thus appear to be comparatively of late date, instead of being, 

 as it is in fact, the earliest trivial name, dating from A. D. 1758, and 

 the tenth edition of the * Systema Naturae.' " 



Near the Garret Cave, while engaged in turning over some stones, I 

 found the skeletons of several bats. I think it possible they may be those 

 of our common Plecotus auritus. The skeletons do not appear to be of very 

 ancient date, and as this portion of the cavern is the nearest to the sur- 

 face, it is quite possible that there may be some slight communications 

 with the open air. 



In conclusion, I would hope that at some future time both these 

 caves and the similar ones of Dunmore will be examined with still 

 greater care than has yet been bestowed upon them. Even in the 

 Mitchelstown Caves there are numerous spots quite unexplored, and, 

 perhaps, the river, which in all probability could be approached from 

 both sides of the cavern, might, if carefully examined throughout its en- 

 tire length, yield some blind Crustacea. I attempted to wade it, but 

 its icy coldness and the rapid deepening of its stalagmitic strand pre- 

 vented me going in far. 



Mr. Haliday remarked that while some species of cave insects ap- 

 peared to be peculiar to separate caverns, or only in common to those 

 which were so situated that an unexplored communication between them 

 seems not improbable, there were others, and among them the Lipura 

 stillicidii, which had a wider range, having been observed in most of 

 the caves of the Austrian territory that have been investigated. It was, 

 therefore, not so improbable as it might at first appear, that the same 

 species should be found in the caves of the British islands. Mr. A. Murray 

 had attempted to explain the absence of a subterranean Fauna in the 

 Derbyshire Caves which he had searched, by their inferior depth ; but 

 this alone would scarcely be a sufficient reason why we should not look 

 for some more discoveries in them by a closer examination. Though we 

 have no subterranean passages to compete with the famous Mammoth 

 Cave of Kentucky, or even with the Baradla Cave in Hungary, which 

 is nearly four English miles in length (only a third of that extent, how- 

 ever, being accessible except in particularly dry seasons), yet some of 

 the Derbyshire Caves exceed in length the celebrated grotto of Adelsberg, 

 the best known and richest locality of the subterranean Fauna. Some 

 of the Austrian cave insects, too, occur in caves of but a few yards in 



VOL. IV. 2 I 



