We present the results of a spectroscopic survey of 675 bright ( 16.5 < \hbox { $b _ { J } $ } < 18 ) galaxies in a 6 degree field centred on the Fornax cluster with the FLAIR-II spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope .
Three galaxy samples were observed : compact galaxies to search for new blue compact dwarfs , candidate M 32-like compact dwarf ellipticals , and a subset of the brightest known cluster members in order to study the cluster dynamics .
We measured redshifts for 516 galaxies of which 108 were members of the Fornax Cluster .
Defining dwarf galaxies to be those with \hbox { $b _ { J } $ } \geq 15 ( \hbox { { M } $ { } _ { B } $ } \geq - 16.5 ) , there are a total of 62 dwarf cluster galaxies in our sample .
Nine of these are new cluster members previously misidentified as background galaxies .
The cluster dynamics show that the dwarf galaxies are still falling into the cluster whereas the giants are virialised .

We classified the observed galaxies as late-type if we detected H \alpha emission at an equivalent width greater than 1 Å .
The spectra were obtained through fixed apertures , so they reflect activity in the galaxy cores , but this does not significantly bias the classifications of the compact dwarfs in our sample .
The new classifications reveal a higher rate of star formation among the dwarf galaxies than suggested by morphological classification : 35 per cent have significant H \alpha emission indicative of star formation but only 19 per cent were morphologically classified as late-types .

The star-forming dwarf galaxies span the full range of physical sizes and we find no evidence in our data for a distinct class of star-forming blue compact dwarf ( BCD ) galaxy .
The distribution of scale sizes is consistent with evolutionary processes which transform late-type dwarfs to early-type dwarfs .
The fraction of dwarfs with active star formation drops rapidly towards the cluster centre : this is the usual density-morphology relation confirmed here for dwarf galaxies .
The star-forming dwarfs are concentrated in the outer regions of the cluster , the most extreme in an infalling subcluster .
We estimate gas depletion time scales for 5 dwarfs with detected H I emission : these are long ( of order 10 ^ { 10 } { \thinspace yr } ) , indicating that an active gas removal process must be involved if they are transformed into gas-poor dwarfs as they fall further into the cluster .
Finally , in agreement with our previous results , we find no compact dwarf elliptical ( M 32-like ) galaxies in the Fornax Cluster .