NORTH AMERICAN EARTHWORMS OF THE FAMILY LUM-BRICIDAE IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. By Frank Smith, Professor of Systematic. Zoology, University of Illinois. INTRODUCTION. The classification of earthworms in common use at the present time recognizes four f amihes of wliich three are represented in North America. The piesent paper deals with the family Lumbricidae, which is chiefly represented in Europe and Western Asia where it presumably originated. North America has scarcely a dozen indige-nous species of this family as yet described and but a slightly larger number of species that are also found in the Eurasian region. A considerable number of the latter have probably been introduced into North America thi'ough the agency of European settlers. Tlie earthworms which are most characteristic of the North American region belong to the famihes Megascolecidae and Geoscolecidae and win be dealt with in a subsequent paper. The systematic literature on North American Lumbricidae is decidedly meager. Eisen was the pioneer in this field, and in 1874 listed nine species of which four were described as new. These spe-cies were recorded as from Mount Lebanon, New England, and from Niagara, Canada. Correspondence with Doctor Eisen has brought out the fact that the Mount Lebanon mentioned is really in the eastern part of the State of New York. Michaelsen described two new species from Georgia and Florida in 1894 and one from North Carohna in 1910, and in 1900 published an important paper dealing with the distribution and relationships of the lumbricid fauna of North America. Ude described a new species from Georgia in 1895, and H. F. Moore in the same year described a new species from Pennsylvania for which he had in 1893 described the new genus Bimastos. Finally, Smith and Gittins described two new Illinois species in 1915, and in the same year Smith pubhshed the descrip-tion of a new variety together with a list of the species found in Ilhnois. Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 52— No. 2174. 157
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