292 EEV. H. FEIEND ON THE 



Studies of British Tree- and Earth-worms. 

 By the Eev. Hildeeic Feiend, M.A., T.L.S. 



[Eead 5th May, 1892.] 



(Plate XXI.) 



I. On the Teee-woems of Geeat Beitain. 



HiTHEETO no attention whatever seems to have been paid by 

 English naturalists to that group of worms whose principal 

 habitat is the old and decaying stumps or trunks of fallen trees, 

 and whose chief service consists in the breaking up of useless 

 timber, and reducing it to vegetable mould. When I com- 

 menced the study of these animals two years ago nothing was 

 known of the subject in this country, and I was therefore com- 

 pelled to examine the works of such continental naturalists as 

 Eisen, Rosa, and Levinsen, in order to ascertain the character of 

 those tree-worms which had already been made known to the 

 scientific world. Thanks to their industry it has been possible 

 for me to identify every species hitherto discovered in Great 

 Britain. So far as present research enables us to speak 

 definitely on the subject, we have no tree-worms peculiar to this 

 island. Every species hitherto examined is known to occur in 

 one or other of the countries of Europe, from Russia and 

 Scandinavia to Brittany and the Italian peninsula. 



But though it has not fallen to the lot of our countrymen to 

 add any species of arboreal worm to the list of new discoveries, it 

 must be admitted that foreign writers on the subject have, so far, 

 almost without exception, failed to recognize the affinities of the 

 group, and present us with any satisfactory system of classifica- 

 tion. 1 purpose therefore, in the present paper, giving the 

 whole subject a careful revision in the light of our indigenous 

 species, with this proviso, however, that when our boreal species 

 have been as carefully worked as I have worked those species 

 which are found south of the Clyde, it may be necessary to some- 

 what modify the characters of the group. 



Eisen was the first naturalist to show that the worms which 

 were formerly included in the genus Lumhricus were marked by 

 such differences as would justify the creation of new genera. He 

 accordingly, in 1873, took the family Lumbricidse and split it up 

 into four genera — Lumhricus, Allolohojphora, Dendrohcena, and 



