396 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



has been removed. The solid mass against which the long crowbar stands 

 is the shale which overlies the sandstone; about 10 feet is seen on the right, 

 which dwindles down to nothing, as shown by the row of boulders along the 

 slope coming down till they rest on the sandstone. Above and beyond the 

 boulders is seen the rubbish of the washout, very thin on the right, but 

 increasing to 10 feet or more on the left. In the upper part is shown the second 

 boulder clay, which extends about twice as much farther upwards than is 

 shown in the Plate. 



XXXIV. Note on Perichaita indica, an Exotic Species of 

 Earthworm living in Hothouses in Kirhcudhrightshire. 

 By Egbert Service, Esq. 



(Read 16th April 1890.) 



Some months ago Mr Charles Fergusson, gardener at Cally 

 House in this county, incidentally mentioned in the course of 

 conversation, that in the hothouses under his charge there 

 was an abundance of a strange earthworm that he had never 

 seen anywhere else. He sent me a few specimens after- 

 wards, and when these arrived, I at once remembered that I 

 had seen the same species before, but where or when I could 

 not recollect. Suspecting it must have been in some of our 

 own hothouses, I instituted a diligent search, and after con- 

 siderable hunting discovered plenty of the same species in a 

 bed composed of cocoanut-fibre refuse and loam in which 

 plants were growing. The men who are daily working 

 amongst the plants declared that these worms had been there 

 for years ; but to show (I suppose) that they knew something 

 about evolution, they added that the worms were only 

 common earthworms that had been brouoht in from the 

 outer world with soil, and that the extra heat and moisture 

 had metamorphosed them into the hard, wiry, agile creatures 

 they prove to be when handled ! 



On sending some of them to Mr F. E. Beddard, that gentle- 

 man kindly informed me they belonged to " an unidentified 

 species of Pericha^ta, a genus of earthworms generally 

 distributed in the tropics of both hemispheres," and that 

 they had doubtless reached this country amongst the roots of 

 imported plants. Since then Mr Beddard, I observe, has 



