Vol. 32, pp. 33-40 April 11, 1919 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF TUK 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



LAKE SUPERIOR LUMBRICULIDS, INCLUDING VER- 

 RILL'S LUMBRICUS LACUSTRIS. 



BY FRANK SMITH. 



The oligochaete material of the United States National 

 Museum includes two bottles of specimens from Lake Superior 

 obtained in 1871 by S. I. Smith, naturalist of the United States 

 Lake Survey. One bottle contains eight specimens catalogued 

 as cotypes of Lumbricus lacustris Verrill (U. S. N. M. Cat. 

 No. 15,589). They were collected among Cladophora in 8-13 

 fathoms of water, on the south side of Saint Ignace Island. 

 Aside from fragments of tubificids they include parts of speci- 

 mens of two distinct species of lumbriculids. The label of the 

 other bottle indicates that its contents were from a different 

 collection, but gives no locality other than Lake Superior. 

 The contents are similar to those of the first bottle and include 

 specimens of the same two lumbriculid species and of at least 

 two distinct tubificid genera. Since L. lacustris is recorded 

 only from the locality mentioned above and from the stomachs 

 of whitefish taken at Outer Island (Smith, S. L, 1874:697), it 

 seems somewhat probable that the two lots of specimens are 

 from the same locality. One of the lumbriculid species is 

 Lumbriculus inconstans (F. Smith) which is already known 

 from a considerable number of localities in the region of the 

 Great Lakes and of the upper Mississippi Valley, and has 

 recently been found in the Arctic regions of North America. 

 The other is a form previously unknown and closely related 

 to Mesoporodrilus asymmetricus F. Smith (1896:402). 



Verrill's description of Lumbricus lacustris (Smith and Ver- 

 rill, 1871:449) is apparently based on a combination of char- 

 acters of the two lumbriculid species above mentioned and is as 



11— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 32, 1919. (33) 



