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ENCHYTRAEIDS OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND. 
Rev. HILDERIC FRIEND. F.L.S., F.R.M.S., 
Swadlincote. 
THanks to the grant for researches among the Annelids of 
Great Britain which I have received from the Government, 
I have been able, during the past few months, greatly to 
extend our knowledge of this vast and important subject, 
upon which I have been engaged at intervals for upwards of 
twenty years. I have paid visits to Cumberland, Lancashire, 
Derbyshire, and other counties in order personally to collect 
material, and study the conditions under which the animals 
flourish, while I have been able also to observe the life-history 
of some of the species, and study the early stages and methods 
of development. 
I propose in the present paper to place on record some of 
the results of my observations among one of the largest groups, 
known as Enchytraeids. With the exception of two or three 
genera, and a few aberrant species, the whole of the creatures 
in this family have colourless blood. They are often of micro- 
scopic dimensions, ranging from about three or four mm. to an 
inch in length, the largest species yet discovered (Fridericia 
magna Friend) being 35 to 40 mm. long, and having red blood. 
The species are ubiquitous. In Cumberland I found them by 
the mouth of the Solway, on the banks of the Eden, in the 
bogs, in woods, manure, damp earth, and indeed, wherever I 
looked for them. In Lancashire, the estuarine forms with red 
blood abound at St. Anne’s, Lytham, and wherever streamlets 
run into the sea, or the sea sends up a little arm inland. In 
Yorkshire and Derbyshire they are to be found in ditches, woods, 
manure heaps, and elsewhere, the different species of Fridericia 
especially being very abundant. Except in those cases in 
which the blood is red, and the worms closely resemble the 
different Tubificids, the Enchytraeids are white, grey, yellowish, 
or clay-coloured. They all require the microscope for their 
determination, and, owing to the vast number of species now 
known, the want of certainty in the diagnosis of several, the 
scattered material which has to be studied, and the difficulty 
in interpreting some of the characters, the work is slow and 
arduous. Something like order is, however, at last emerging 
from the former chaos, and we are gaining a tolerably accurate 
knowledge of the species and their distribution. 
The main external points are the shape of the head, the 
length of the body and number of segments, the position of the 
girdle and the number of the setae. Internally the shape of 
the brain, coelomic corpuscles, spermathecae, salivary glands 
or peptonephridia, the ordinary paired nephridia, the origin 
totr Aug. 1. 
ie 
