1915.] J. STEPHENSON : Indian Oligochaeta. 37 
INR OD UCT LON: 
The following paper deals principally with two collections of Oligochaeta from 
the southern extremity of the Indian region ,—one made by Mr. Kemp in Ceylon in 
December, 1913, and one by Mr. Gravely in Cochin State in September, 1914. I have 
added to the account of these collections descriptions or notes of a few worms that 
have recently come into my hands from other sources ;—two species from Bombay 
kindly sent me by Mr. N. Kinnear of the Bombay Natural History Society, of which 
one is already known and one belongs to a new genus; one found near Simla by my 
pupil L. Baini Parshad, M.Sc., Research Student of the Panjab University; an 
Enchytraeid from Darjiling District belonging to Lord Carmichael’s Zoological collec- 
tion in the Indian Museum; and one or two species collected by Dr. Annandale at 
Ennur near Madras; the occurrence of the common Pheretima posthuma at Allahabad, 
whence it was sent me by Dr. Woodland, is also worth recording because of its bearing 
on our knowledge of the Indian earthworm faunain general. 
To take the last point first. In a recent paper (22) I wrote:—‘‘ Though the 
United Provinces (the upper Gangetic plain) is one of the best investigated regions in 
India in the matter of terrestrial Oligochaeta, Pheretima posthuma has hitherto been 
found nowhere within its limits; though it is on the one hand the commonest worm 
of the Punjab, and on the other has been recorded by Michaelsen from no fewer than 
ten places in Bengal.’’ Indeed the genus Pheretima appeared to be absent or practi- 
cally absent from the region intervening between Bengal and the Punjab. On receiv- 
ing a copy of the paper containing these remarks, Dr. Woodland immediately sent 
me some worms belonging to the species commonly used for dissection in Allahabad, 
asking if they were not P. dosthuma,— which they were. Pheretima posthuma 
being a well-known peregrine form, the occurrence is of no particular importance from 
a zoogeographical point of view: but it is interesting as showing that we are still far 
from a complete acquaintance with the distribution of Indian earthworms, and that 
any conclusions based on the absence of any forms from this or that region are liable 
to be upset at any time. It is probably true that, as Michaelsen wrote (9) in 1900, 
‘We may now be sure as regards the principal characters of this interesting fauna 
and are justified in drawing conclusions as to its distribution and as to the geological 
history on which this distribution depends’’; but notwithstanding the fact that consi- 
derable collections have been worked over since that date, it would seem that India 
isso large and diversified that all that has been done is really not much more than 
the taking of a few samples here and there. 
From the point of view of the Oligochaete system, the most interesting result of 
the investigation of the present material is the discovery of two new genera, one from 
