2 BRITISH WELL-WORMS. 



It is now my pleasure to be able to say that the words in 

 brackets ("not in England") are henceforth to be deleted ; and 

 the honour of this belongs to Essex. 



§ Historical. 



Let me first'give a history of the Well-worms themselves, 

 then of the new species. The scientific name of the genus is 

 derived from the Greek, in which language Phear means a well, 

 cistern, water tank, or fountain.' It was first employed by Hoff- 

 meister. He had discovered a worm in Germany which had not 

 previously been described, and applied to the new genus the name 

 of Haplotaxis, a term which is derived from the Greek haploos, 

 meaning simple.x, one-fold, simple, and taxis, order, rank, 

 arrangement. This was in 1843. Hoffmeister afterwards dis- 

 covered that the term Haplotaxis was already appropriated ; the 

 learned botanist, De Candolle, having employed it for a genus of 

 the Order Compositae. He therefore compounded the word 

 Phrcorydcs, which lie employed in 1845. In 1854 another writer 

 named Schlotthauber changed the name to Gcoryctcs — earth - 

 dweller — on the ground that it was occasionally found in the soil 

 and was not exclusively a denizen of wells. That was, of 

 course, an altogether improper change. Vaillant, however, 

 pointed out sometime after that Claparede had ignorantly added 

 to the synonymy by describing a worm found in the Rhone as 

 Ncmodviliis. This was found later to be a Phveoryctes. It is no 

 doubt desirable that we should avoid overlapping in nomencla- 

 ture, and although it might be urged that there is no reason why 

 Haplotaxis should not be used in Zoology as well as in botany, 

 the term Phreorycies has become so fully established that it will 

 be well to retain it in future rather than revive the earlier name. 



i Descriptive. 



At this point it may be well to specify some of the charac- 

 teristics of this very interesting group of worms. They are, with 

 one exception, very long and thin, with red blood and sigmoid 

 bristles or setae. These are not cleft at the end as in some of the 

 fresh water annelids. The number of seta; varies from two to 

 four in each segment, and they are arranged singly, whereas in 



I It should lie rioted that there are two other genera of well-worms which cicrive their 

 names from this word, viz., /'/irt'a(o//in',v, of which one species has been found in wells on 

 the Continrnt; and P/n'eoi/;:7i/s, of which also one species has been found in wells in New 

 Zealand. Thus we have in all three genera of well-worms at present known to science, 

 containing seven species. 



