70 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES' MEETING AT DOVER.
regarding them should be forwarded as soon as possible. For example, when
any fall of a portion of shore-cliff occurs, note of the circumstances should
be taken, with measurements (if that be found practicable) or estimates of
the area or amount of material that has been dislodged. When any groynes
or other artificial protections of the coast are washed away, this should also
be reported, and likewise when any new groynes or other works on the coast
are constructed.
B. The Council of the British Association will be glad to receive any
other information of which the observer may be in possession, bearing upon
the changes that are taking place along the shore.
[The answers to these two paragraphs A and B can be written below, or
if necessary on other sheets of foolscap paper]
Signature of person Reporting.
Coast Guard Station.
At the first meeting of the Conference, the Rev. T. R. R.
Stebbing, F.R.S., Chairman of the Conference, after a few
preliminary remarks on the result of the discussion on Coast
Erosion at the Bristol meeting, read a short paper on
The Living Subterranean Fauna of Great Britain and Ireland.
In the first place he noticed the many animals which, though their
dwellings are in some sense subterranean, yet come out and roam over the
surface for various purposes either by night or by day. As examples he
mentioned bats and rats, foxes, rabbits, badgers, moles, vipers, lizards, beetles,
and worms, together with various marine species, which have a habit of burying
themselves in sand and ooze. From these he turned to creatures which pass
the whole of their lives underground in wells and caverns. The first un-
doubted mention of a subterranean animal of this kind seemed to be that
of a crustacean belonging to the Amphipoda, found in London, and named
by Dr. Leach, of the British Museum, in 1813. Since that time many valu-
able treatises on creatures of subterranean life had been published in various
European languages, including the Polish. The English student should
study "The Cave Fauna of North America," by Dr. Packard, published in the
Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol iv., Washington, 1888;
also "The Subterranean Crustacea of New Zealand," by Dr. Charles
Chilton, published in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London,
1894. Packard enumerated 308 European cave animals, and 102 American.
This total of 410 includes a few Protozoa, a Sponge, two Hydras, a few
Worms, one Mollusc, several Crustacea and Myriapods, numerous
Arachnids and many Coleoptera. The other insects were chiefly
Thysanura. The Vertebrates consist of four American Fish and
one European Batrachian, the celebrated Proteus anguineus. The known
well-fauna of Great Britain and Ireland comprise only four species of