1905.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 3<3 



SOME MARINE OLIGOCH^TA OF NEW ENGLAND. 

 BY J. PERCY MOORE. 



That the study of the httoral Oligochsta of the eastern United States 

 has been much neglected becomes evident when it is mentioned that 

 but four original references to the subject occur in the literature, and 

 three of these are very brief diagnoses of species. The first is found m 

 Prof. Leidy's Coniributions to the Marine Invertebrate Fauna of Rhode 

 Island and New Jersey, published in 1855, where Lumbriculus tenuis 

 is described from specimens taken at Point Judith, Rhode Island. In 

 1863, Minor gave a quite recognizable description in the American Jour- 

 nal of Arts and Sciences of his Enchytroius triventralopectinatus, taken 

 near high-water mark at New Haven, Connecticut. In 1873, in the 

 Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound, Prof. Verrill 

 describes as new Clitellio irrorata and Halodrillus (gen. nov.) littoralis. 

 The first three of these have not since been reported by any other 

 observers, but the last was carefully studied and its anatomy described 

 in a Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History for 1895 

 by Smith, who establishes its identity with a widely distributed 

 species of Enchytrceus. Michaelsen, in his Monograph of the Oligo- 

 chceta, recognizes the close resemblance between ^Minor's species and 

 the well-known Paranais littoralis of Europe. The remaining two 

 species have been noticed repeatedly by monographers and systematic 

 writers who have been unable to arrive at any satisfactory conclusions 

 as to their status. 



While engaged in studying Polychceta, chiefly in the region about 

 Wood's Hole, Massachusetts, but also at other points on the New Eng- 

 land coast, for several years past, the writer has collected a number of 

 species of littoral Oligochceta which, besides permitting the identifica- 

 tion of the previously recorded species with certainty, except in the 

 case of Lumbriculus tenuis, embrace several interesting additions to 

 our known fauna. Minor's Enchytrceus triventralopectinatus proves to 

 be Paranais littoralis, as supposed by Michaelsen; Lumbriculus tenuis 

 Leidy is almost certainly Clitellio arenarius (MiiUer); Halodrillus lit- 

 torcdis Verrill is Enchytrceus albidus Henle; and Critellio irrorata Verrill is 

 a composite of Tubifex irroratus (Verrill), Tubifex benedeni Udekem and 



