7Q CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES' MEETING AT DOVER. 



regarding them should be forwarded as soon as possible. For example, when 

 any fall of a portion of shore-cliff occurs, note of the circumstances should 

 be taken, with measurements (if that be found practicable) or estimates of 

 the area or amount of material that has been dislodged. When any groynes 

 or other artificial protections of the coast are washed away, this should also 

 be reported, and likewise when any new groynes or other works on the coast 

 are constructed. 



B. The Council of the British Association will be glad to receive any 

 other information of which the observer may be in possession, bearing upon 

 the changes that are taking place along the shore. 



[The answers to these two paragraphs A and B can be written below, or 

 if necessary on other sheets of foolscap paper.] 



Signature q/ person Reporting. 



Const Guard Station. 



At the first meeting of the Conference, the Rev. T. R. R. 

 Stebbing, F.R.S., Chairman of the Conference, after a few 

 preliminary remarks on the result of the discussion on Coast 

 Er(5sion at the Bristol meeting, read a short paper on 



Thi-: Living Subterrane.\n Fauna of Gri^at Britain and Ireland. 



In the first place he noticed the many animals which, though their 

 dwellings are in some sense subterranean, yet come out and roam over the 

 surface for various purposes either by night or by day. As examples he 

 mentioned bats and rats, foxes, rabbits, badgers, moles, vipers, lizards, beetles, 

 and worms, together with various marine species, which have a habit of burying 

 themselves in sand and ooze. From thess he turned to creatures which pass 

 the whole of their lives underground in wells and caverns. The first un- 

 doubted mention of a subterranean animal of this kind seemed to be that 

 of a crustacean belonging to the Amphipoda, found in London, and named 

 by Dr. Leach, of the British Museum, in 1813. Since that time many valu- 

 able treatises on creatures of subterranean life had been published in various 

 European languages, including the Polish. The English student should 

 study " The Cave Fauna of North America," by Dr. Packard, published in the 

 Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol iv., Washington, 1888; 

 also "The Subterranean Crustacea of New Zealand," by Dr. Charles 

 Chilton, published in the Transaction^ of the Liniiean Society of London, 

 1894. Packard enumerated 308 European cave animals, and 102 American. 

 This total of 410 includes a few Protozoa, a Sponge, two Hydras, a few 

 Worms, one Mollusc, several Crustacea and Myriapods, numerous 

 Arachnids and many Coleoptera. The other insects were chiefly 

 Thysanura. The Vertebrates consist of four .\merican Fish and 

 one European Batrachian, the celebrated Proteus anguineus. The known 

 well-fauna of Great Britain and Ireland comprise only four species of 



