Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/547

Rh brought by Dr. Murie, which he described in the Zoological 'Proceedings' as Trochetia subviridis, is not a Trochetia at all, but must belong, from the structure of the oral, and especially the ventral, sucker, either to a peculiar species of Hæmopis or to a new genus not hitherto described. I thought at the lime when Dr. Murie brought the specimen here that it might belong to the genus Trochetia, but now I find it does not."

Shortly before ihe date of this letter—namely, in February, 1869—several specimens of Trochetia subviridis, taken in the garden of Mr. Broadwood, at Lyne, between Dorking and Horsham, were forwarded by a friend of his—Mr. George Rooper, of Nascott House, Watford—to the Editor of 'Land and Water' for identification. In a note which accompanied the specimens, Mr. Rooper referred to them as "frequenting gravel walks and grass plots, on which—during the night principally—they seek their food, consisting, as far as I know, exclusively of their cousins the, earthworms. These they seize, and, as a general rule, without reference to their relative size, swallow whole. I am assured that a leech will swallow a worm bigger than itself! After their meal, like the snakes, they fall into a lethargic slumber, which lasts for days or weeks, until the two bodies are assimilated, to the manifest advantage of one—the leech."

To this letter, which was published, under the initials "G.R.," in the Natural-History columns of 'Land and Water' (20th February, 1869), Mr. Henry Lee appended a note in which he identified the species and pointed out some of its characters.

This announcement elicited an interesting communication from the Rev. W. Houghton, to which reference has already been made, and a month later—namely, on the 20th March, 1869—there appeared in the same journal a letter from Mr. Broadwood, in which, after remarking that it was he who had supplied Mr. Rooper with the specimens forwarded to the Editor of 'Land and Water' for examination, stated that he had for many years observed these annelids on the lawn and paths of his garden, and that on the 18th of the previous month of January a young friend who had taken some specimens with him to Cambridge wrote to him that he had identified them with Trochetia subviridis.

It would appear from a note by the late Mr. Gedge (Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy at Cambridge) published in 'The Annals