2
BRITISH WELL-WORMS.
It is now my pleasure to be able to say that the words in
brackets ("not in England") are henceforth to be deleted ; and
the honour of this belongs to Essex.
§ Historical.
Let me first give a history of the Well-worms themselves,
then of the new species. The scientific name of the genus is
derived from the Greek, in which language Phear means a well,
cistern, water tank, or fountain.1 It was first employed by Hoff-
meister. He had discovered a worm in Germany which had not
previously been described, and applied to the new genus the name
of Haplotaxis, a term which is derived from the Greek haploos,
meaning simplex, one-fold, simple, and taxis, order, rank,
arrangement. This was in 1843. Hoffmeister afterwards dis-
covered that the term Haplotaxis was already appropriated ; the
learned botanist, De Candolle, having employed it for a genus of
the Order Compositae. He therefore compounded the word
Phreoryctes, which he employed in 1845. In 1854 another writer
named Schlotthauber changed the name to Georyctes—earth-
dweller—on the ground that it was occasionally found in the soil
and was not exclusively a denizen of wells. That was, of
course, an altogether improper change. Vaillant, however,
pointed out sometime after that Claparede had ignorantly added
to the synonymy by describing a worm found in the Rhone as
Nemodrilus. This was found later to be a Phreoryctes. It is no
doubt desirable that we should avoid overlapping in nomencla-
ture, and although it might be urged that there is no reason why
Haplotaxis should not be used in Zoology as well as in botany,
the term Phreoryctes has become so fully established that it will
be well to retain it in future rather than revive the earlier name.
§ Descriptive.
At this point it may be well to specify some of the charac-
teristics of this very interesting group of worms. They are, with
one exception, very long and thin, with red blood and sigmoid
bristles or setae. These are not cleft at the end as in some of the
fresh water annelids. The number of setae varies from two to
four in each segment, and they are arranged singly, whereas in
1 It should be noted that there are two other genera of well-worms which derive their
names from this word, viz., Phreatothrix, of which one species has been found in wells on
the Continent; and Phreodrilus, of which also one species has been found in wells in Kew
Zealand. Thus we have in all three genera of well-worms at present known to science,
containing seven species.