180 EARTHWORMS OF MADAGASCAR. [CH. Ill 



that great wind storms, prevalent in this part of the world, 

 do not cross the equator, which they would certainly have 

 to do in order to convey animals or their eggs from India 

 to the Seychelles. The earthworms of Madagascar are 

 unfortunately not at all well known. But what we do 

 know supports the facts brought together and emphasized 

 by Mr Blanford. There is in the island at least one 

 peculiar genus. This has been termed by Dr Michaelsen 

 Kynotus, and it contains three or four species. The only 

 other earthworms known from Madagascar are Perrier's 

 Acanthodrilus verticillatus and Perichceta madagasca- 

 riensis and P. indica. The former worm is only very doubt- 

 fully an Acanthodrilus', I bring forward reasons in my 

 forthcoming Monograph of the Oligochaeta for referring it 

 to the already mentioned genus Kynotus, with one of the 

 already described species of which it may be identical. 

 Perichceta madagascariensis is closely allied to, if not 

 identical with Megascolex armatus, a common Indian form. 

 Perichceta indica is not far from being a cosmopolite. 

 Now the genus Kynotus belongs to the family Geosco- 

 licidae, which is distributed through tropical South 

 America and the West Indies, tropical Africa, and certain 

 parts of Malaya; it just gets into Europe. But the old 

 world forms can be separated from those of the new world 

 to so marked an extent that it is permissible to divide the 

 family into two subfamilies. The spermathecse in the old 

 world forms if present at all, and they are occasionally 

 absent altogether, are very numerous and minute, while 

 those of the American genera are the usual paired 

 structures which are so characteristic of the Oligochaeta. 



