4024 Crustacea. 



Cyclas cornea. Ponds at the Ballycorns lead-works. 



„ lacustris. Same locality as the last, but rare. 

 Pisidium nitidum. Fox-rock, Killiney and Shangannagh. 



„ pulchellum. Ponds at the Ballycorns lead-works. 



William White Walpqle. 

 Windsor Lodge, Monkstown, 



Co. Dublin, July 8, 1853. 



Note on Niphargus stygius, Schiodte, and other Members of the Subterranean Fauna. 

 " Mr. Westwood, F.L.S., communicated a notice of the discovery in England of a new 

 genus and species of Ainphipodous Crustacea, the Niphargus stygius of Schiodte, an 

 animal hitherto only found in the caverns of Adelsberg, celebrated as the locality of 

 the Proteus anguinus. The Crustacean in question has been found in great numbers 

 in a well near Maidenhead, the water of which was in consequence rendered unfit for 

 use.* Mr. Westwood took occasion to remind the members of the opinion entertained 

 by some naturalists of the existence of a distinct subterranean Fauna, of which the 

 Proteus was an example : the members of which Fauna hitherto discovered were re- 

 markable for their general want of colour, and for their being destitute of eyes, — two 

 physiological conditions dependent on the dark and gloomy places where they have 

 hitherto been found. Mr. Kirby, in his ' Bridgewater Treatise,' was one of those 

 writers who contended that such animals formed no part of the Fauna now in exist- 

 ence on the surface of the earth, but belonged to a distinct subterranean race of ani- 

 mals. M. Schiodte, in a remarkable memoir recently published in the * Transactions 

 of the Danish Academy' (which Dr. Wallich has kindly translated for the Entomolo- 

 gical Society of London, in whose Memoirs the translation has appeared), has described 

 a number of singular animals belonging to the class of Annulosa, exhibiting all the 

 characteristics of such a Fauna, being destitute of sight, and also almost or quite co- 

 lourless. Amongst them are the Crustacean in question, a species of spider and false 

 scorpion, a species of the family Poduridae, and several Coleoptera, all of which were 

 found in the caverns of Adelsberg in Carniola. Mr. Westwood also noticed that ani- 

 mals very closely related to those described by Schiodte had been found in the Great 

 Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, including also a blind species of cray-fish, and one or 

 more species of fishes destitute of eyes, at least wanting the transparent external cor- 

 nea, although the optic nerve was present, which would probably allow a certain sensi- 

 bility to the presence of light ; and M. Schmidt had noticed that two newly discovered 

 species of beetles, belonging to one of Schiodte's singular genera, although destitute 

 of all external rudiments of eyes, had exhibited a sensibility to light by retreating 

 under stones and towards the darker parts of the cavern when brought towards its 

 entrance. A remarkable new genus of shrimps had also been recently described by 

 Professor Bell in his work on the British Crustacea, dredged at a very great depth of 

 the ocean, of which the eyes, although present, were destitute of the usual hexagonal 

 facets." — From the ' Proceedings of the Linnean Society,' April 19, 1853, p. 218. 



* See also Proceedings of the Entomological Society, (Zool. 3923). 



