i86 r.Rnisn annelids. 



Out of the hundreds of dendrobsenic forms examined from all parts 

 of the kingdom, during every period of the year, I have hitherto 

 failed to observe these organs. The forms which frequent trees 

 secrete a small quantity of yellow fluid from the dorsal pores, but 

 several of the terrestrial forms of the same species are incapable of 

 doing so. This is another curious fact which merits further investi- 

 gation. 



There are four well-marked species known to occur in Great 

 Britain, in addition to five forms or varieties. I shall be obliged 

 to depart from the arrangement adopted in my memoir referred to 

 above in some points, owing to the discoveries which I have made 

 since its publication. I formerly proposed the " Celtic Worm " 

 {Allolobophora cdtica, Rosa) as the type of this group ; but I now 

 prefer, for reasons to be given hereafter, to go back to Eisen's type 

 i^Dendrobcena boeckii), and base our English species thereon. Un- 

 fortunately, this species is at present unknown to Essex. In the 

 following enumeration, I shall specify all the British forms known 

 to me at the close of 1892, giving localities for those only which are 

 found at present in Essex. 



I. BcEck's Worm (Dendrobaena bceckii, Eisen). The 

 original description of this worm as a new species and genus ap- 

 peared in 1873. The genus was separated from AHolobophora cYnt^y 

 on the ground that the set02 were wide apart. This character, how- 

 ever, is variable, and we find in other species of worms, as, for 

 example, A. profuga, Rosa, a similar arrangement. Eisen gives this 

 brief account of the genus. "Male pores on segment 14 (=15 

 English method), setce everywhere equidistant, except in the case 

 of the two highest (on the back), which are somewhat wider 

 apart than the others. The lip cuts into the peristomium to a 

 distance of three-fourths the diameter." He says the species under 

 description is the same as Lumbricus pnfer, Eisen, an account 

 of which he had published two years before. The girdle in the 

 type occupies, as a rule, the five segments 29 to 2ih three of 

 which (31, 32, 33) carry the clitellar papillce {tiiberaila piibertatis). 

 The anal segment is somewhat pearshaped. The lip cuts deeply into 

 the first ring, but does not completely bisect it. There are some- 

 what prominent papillae carrying the male pores. The first dorsal 

 pore is well seen between the fifth and sixth segments. The worm 

 is about one and-a-half inches, or twenty-five to thirty-five milli- 

 metres, in length, and contains a total of eighty to 100 segments. 



