74r Journal of the Mitchell Society [August 



plored, except that the marine forms have been partially studied 

 at Beaufort by Professor Edmundson of the University of 

 Oregon. Comparatively few of the marine worms appear to 

 have been recorded, much less has the geographical range of 

 these on our coast been worked out. 



Our three prominent capes, Fear, Lookout, and Hatteras, 

 each presumably mark the northern or southern distribution of 

 certain species of marine and coast-inhabiting animals. Perhaps 

 no other one locality on our coast offers so good a field for system- 

 matic collecting as Beaufort, but the thorough student of the 

 distribution of our coast forms would wish to explore both sides 

 of each of these three capes. 



Studies from the morphological side of the subject have been 

 conducted among the Porifera (sponges), the leader in this 

 being Dr. Wilson, of our State University, also in the Coelenter- 

 ates, Echinoderms, and larger species of Crustacea. 



II. LAND AND FRESH-WATER INVERTEBRATES^ NOT INSECTS 



Such common forms as earth-worms, snails, crayfish, centi- 

 pedes, millipedes, spiders, ticks and mites are here included. 

 Entimologists incidentally accumulate some knowledge of milli- 

 pedes, spiders and ticks on account of their obvious affinities 

 to, or association with, insects, — but the true worms and snails 

 have been very little studied, though every person in this au- 

 dience has known them from childhood. Verily, it is often the 

 commonest things of which we know the least. If I could adver- 

 tise, and here place on exhibit even the smallest bit of entirely 

 lifeless matter genuinely known to have come from the planet 

 Mars, I doubt not that this hall would be crowded with persons 

 eager to quench their thirst for knowledge by gazing at the 

 specimen, yet many of those same persons would not know that 

 some of the common snails in our gardens naturally have a 

 shell, while other common snails naturally never have a shell. 



Mr. C. S. Brimley has studied the spiders and millipedes 

 of Raleigh to some extent, and Mr. Nathan Banks, of the Na- 

 tional Museum at Washington, has collected spiders quite assidu- 

 ously for several weeks in the vicinity of Black Mountain, but 



