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4. The South African Hirudinea Part I. By E. J. 

 GODDARD, B.A., D.Sc., and D. E. MALAN, B.A. 



THE present paper deals with some members of the Hirudinea 

 collected in the Orange Eiver Colony and Cape Colony. 



Comparatively little is known of the South African representatives 

 of the group, and the few which have been described are imperfectly 

 known. The name of one of the described forms appears to be 

 erroneously applied to any Hirudo found in the South African 

 Union. 



The first mention of the South African forms in scientific litera- 

 ture appears to be in the accounts of the results of the Novara 

 Expedition which visited these parts in 1868. In this Grube has 

 described two species of Hirudo H. serjtemstriata and H. capensis. 



In 1871 Grube described a form from Port Natal under the name 

 Aulacostomum Kraussii. 



Blanchard in 1898 described forms from German East Africa 

 under the following names : 



GlossipJionia Stuhlmanni (sp. nov.). 

 Helobdella tricarinata (gen. et sp. nov.). 

 Hirudo Hildebrandti (sp. nov.). 

 Salifa perspicox (gen. et sp. nov.). 



Beyond these accounts we know of no others referring to Hiru- 

 dinea in the region including the above-mentioned areas and the- 

 intervening country. Up to the present time, as the result of a 

 short period of collecting we have succeeded in finding representa- 

 tives of Ichthyobdellidae, Glossiphoniidae, and Gnathobdellidas ; and 

 as Blanchard has described one representative of the Herpobdellidte, 

 viz., Salifa, we now know that the Hirudinea are represented in the 

 southern half of the continent by members of all the divisions of 

 the group. This was to be expected, as all continental areas have 

 supplied representatives of each of the -divisions. 



However, we have not yet found any terrestrial forms, or rather, 

 land leeches, but this is readily explicable, since the country so far 



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