2 1 6 The Irish Na turalisi. 



THE EARTHWORMS OF IREIvAND. 



BY RKV. HII^DKRIC FRIEND, F.I,.S. 



( Continued from page 191. 



HiTHKRTO no attention whatever seems to have been paid by 

 British naturalists to that group of worms whose principal 

 habitat is the old and decaying stumps or trunks of fallen trees, 

 and whose chief service consists in the breaking up of useless 

 timber, and reducing it to a vegetable mould. When I com- 

 menced the study of these animals two 3^ears ago nothing was 

 known of the subject in this country, and I was therefore com- 

 pelled to examine the works of such continental naturalists as 

 Eisen, Rosa, and Eevinsen, in order to ascertain the character 

 of those tree- worms which had already been made known to 

 the scientific world. Thanks to their industry, it has been 

 possible for me to identify every species hitherto discovered in 

 Great Britain. So far as present research enables us to speak 

 definitely on the subject, we have no tree-worms peculiar to 

 this island. Every species hitherto examined is known to 

 occur in one or other of the countries of Europe, from Russia 

 and Scandinavia to Brittany and the Italian peninsula. 



But though it has not fallen to the lot of our countrymen to 

 add any species of arboreal worm to the list of new discoveries, 

 it must be admitted that foreign writers on the subject have, 

 so far, almost without exception, failed to recognize the 

 affinities of the group, and present us with any satisfactory 

 sy.stem of classification. I purpose therefore, in the present 

 paper, giving the whole subject a careful revision in the light 

 of our indigenous species, with this proviso, however, that 

 when our boreal and Irish species have been as carefully 

 worked as I have worked those found south of the Clyde, it 

 may be necessary to somewhat modify the characters of the 

 group. 



Eisen was the first naturalist to show that the worms which 

 were formerly included in the genus Lumbricus were marked 

 by such differences as would justify the creation of new genera. 

 He accordingly, in 1873, took the family Ltinibricidcs and split 

 it up into four genera — Lumbricus, Allolobophora, Dendrobcena, 



