1896-] McWeKNEY& Praeger. — Fatina and Flora, Clonbrock. 221 



all morning, at last canni down in earnest, and it was a 

 drenched and bedraggled party that reached Clonbrock at 

 about four o'clock. The rain continued, so we spent a very 

 busy afternoon putting away specimens, and sorting and 

 arranging the spoil of the last few days. 



The pleasantest time must have an end, and on Tuesday 

 morning we bade a grateful adieu to our host and hostess, and 

 drove to Ballinasloe, stopping for an hour at some gravel-pits 

 by the roadside, which yielded a number of plants which we 

 had not seen at any other place in the district — plants, such 

 as the poppies, which love light soils. Ballinasloe was reached 

 in good time, and in due course we once again glided under 

 the familiar roof of Broadstone terminus. 



LAND PIvANARIANS AND LEECHES. 

 BY R. F. SCHARFF, PH.D. 



Several specimens of the only British land planarian, 

 EhyncJiodemus terrestris (almost all planarians being either 

 marine or freshwater species), was secured under dead tree- 

 trunks in Clonbrock forest. This little worm, as I pointed out 

 in Nattire (vol. 50, p. 617), is exceedingly rare, and is only 

 known from about a dozen European localities. This is the 

 second Irish record, having been first discovered in Ireland 

 at Blackrock, near Dublin, by Miss Kelsall. It is a very 

 inconspicuous black slug-like worm, about half an inch in 

 length, and it seems to love damp shady places. 



Halbert and I took several hauls in the Clonbrock river on 

 the second day, and among other interesting objects, secured 

 two species of freshwater leeches, viz., Glossiphonia complanata^ 

 ly., and G> hetcroclita, L. The}^ are both about half an 

 inch long when at rest, and are parasitic on water-snails. 

 The former, which is the commoner of the two, is of a reddish- 

 grey colour and semitransparent, so that its internal organs 

 are plainly visible. Another curious feature about this leech 

 is that it carries its young about with it, and one of the speci- 

 mens taken had about a dozen very minute leeches fixed to 

 the underside of the mother by their posterior sucker. The 

 other leech is yellowish, and its six eyes are arranged in a 

 triangle, so that with an ordinary lens only three are visible, 

 though each of these is really composed of two. 



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