American Bird- \l<iitor$ to Ireland at Home. 89 



The wings are far from scythe-shaped, as usual in other swal- 

 lows,and still more in the swifts, but have both edi^es rather 

 straig-ht,and approaching a triangle in shape. The l)ir(l never- 

 theless can match the best of them in speed, and graceful move- 

 ments on the wing. Its food consists not onl}^ of flies and gnats, 

 but also of bees, Avasps, and beetles. Its note is a loud and 

 varied twitter, almost amounting to a song. It is the only swal- 

 low of Ireland or the United States in which the two sexes differ 

 decidedly in colour. The male is entirely a beautiful glossy 

 purplish black, the female greyish brown, lighter or almost 

 white on the breast, glossed with steel-blue on the back and 

 head. Young birds are like the female, the young males being 

 somewhat the darker, and soon showing traces of purple. 



On the 17th October, 18S7, when steaming down the Missis- 

 sippi, near Burlington, I saw a flock of Martins, estimated at 

 one hundred and fifty birds, in a dense cloud over the water, 

 apparentl}^ feeding on a swarm of insects. The occurrence was 

 remarkable, as I never saw so many Martins together before or 

 since, and all Martins w^ere .supposed to have left this part of 

 the country fully a month previously. 



THE EARTHWORMS OF IRELAND. 



BY REV. HII^DERIC FRIEND, F.L.S- 



(^Continued frojn page 43). 



We are now to take the four groups into which the genus 

 Allolobophora has been divided, and discuss the species which 

 they respectively contain. 



Group I. Lumbrlcoidca. 



Allolobophora longa, Ude.— Long Worm. This species is the 

 type of this section, and the only British representative at present known. 

 Although it is even more ubiquitous than the common earthworm (Z. tcr- 

 restris, Linn.), and has been known to the angler for ages past as the 

 Black-head, yet it was only recognised as a distinct species seven years 

 ago, when Ude described it in the Zeitschrifi fur IVissenschaftluhe Zoolo^e{ ibb6 

 vol. xhii., p. 136), from specimens found in rich soil at Gottmgen. It had 

 never, I believe, been recognised as a British worm, till I found it three 

 3^ears ago around Carlisle, although it is so common that university pro- 

 fessors and others have frequently used it as their type when giving 

 lectures on biology! In more than one recent text-book it is apparent 

 that the learned author had not the faintest idea that the Long A\ onn 

 was different from the typical earthw^orm. It may be found in every 

 part of Great Britain, and is as widely distributed in Ireland as in England. 



A"* 



