26 The Irish Naturalist. 



waters percolating through the rock, are sufficiently familiar. 

 The Mitchelstown Cave will not disappoint either geologist or 

 artist in search of interesting or beautiful forms among its 

 arches, pendants, and columns. 



To the zoologists of our party, however, the interest of the 

 place centred in the fact of its being the only cave in the British 

 Isles known to be inhabited by a member of the peculiar blind, 

 subterranean fauna, which, through explorations of the 

 European and North American caverns, now includes some 

 hundreds of species. In 1857, I^i"- H. Perceval Wright and 

 the late Mr. A. H. Haliday discovered here a minute insect of 

 the order Collembola, which they described in a paper read 

 before the British Association meeting at Dublin that year,' 

 and identified doubtfully with Lipura stilicidii, Schiodte, in- 

 habiting the Aldesberg grotto, Carniola. To re-find this species 

 was therefore our object, and we hoped also that the discovery 

 of some other inhabitants of the place might reward our 

 searchr 



The hill in which the cave is situated forms part of a small 

 farm, the occupiers of which are well acquainted with the 

 passages, and act as guides. After an informal luncheon on 

 the roadside, our part}^, provided with candles, descended the 

 sloping passage, and ladder which lead to the depths below. 

 The time at our disposal was only two hours — far too short to 

 explore all the galleries and chambers — and we did not reach 

 the underground river, in which Dr. Wright and Mr. Haliday 

 sought vainly for blind crustaceans. The rate of progress was 

 necessarily slow, so that we were able to examine the floor 

 and sides of the passages with some thoroughness, in our 

 search for insects. At no great distance from the entrance, I 

 was delighted to find three small pale spiders (a male and two 

 females) crawling over one of the large blocks of rock on the 

 floor. I recognised them as belonging to the genus Porrho?nina, 

 and hoped the}^ might prove to be referable to F. viyops, Simon, 

 described from a cave in southern France, and with only the 

 female known. Subsequent examination proved this hope 

 well-founded. Collecting underground was somewhat difficult, 

 the necessity for carrying a candle seriously reducing the 

 number of fingers available for seizing and bottling specimens. 

 Under these conditions we willingly came to each other's help 



W<2/. Hist, Rev.t vol, iv,, 1857, Proc. pp. 231-241, pi. xviii. 



