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3. Report upon- the Oli/jocliacta in the South African J/.sr /////, at 

 Cape Town. By W. MICHAELSEN (Hamburg). 



MY stay at Cape Town in the year 1911 being too short for studying 

 the rich collection of Oligochaeta in the South African Museum, Mr. 

 Peringuey, Director of that Museum, offered to send the collection 

 to me in Hamburg for a more exact examination. The present 

 paper is a rather short report upon this collection. A more detailed 

 treatise with figures will be published elsewhere, combining the 

 Oligochaets of the South African Museum with those collected by 

 myself in the year 1911, and with those of the Natal Museum at 

 Pietermaritzburg. 



The main value of the present collection is to be seen in the 

 circumstance that it contains the types of Beddard's Acantlwdrilus 

 species published in his paper: "On a Collection of Earthworms 

 from South Africa belonging to the Genus Acanthodnlus ' (in 

 P. Zool. Soc., London, 1897). This paper of Beddard still belongs 

 to that period in which only a few species with acanthodriline 

 sexual organs were known, and in which all these acanthodriline 

 species were put into the large genus Acanthodrilus in the ancient 

 and primordial sense. Beddard accordingly did not lay any stress 

 upon the marks of a generic division created in much later time. 

 Consequently it is questionable to which of the genera strictiora of 

 younger date some of these ancient species belong. Furthermore, 

 at the time of Beddard's publication there were known only a few 

 acanthodriline species which might be separated easily by a small 

 number of characters. Therefore we look in the diagnoses of 

 Beddard in vain for certain categories of characters which at the 

 present time we regard as necessary parts of a good diagnosis. 

 The examination of this collection thus enables rne to give a more 

 modern statement of most of these Acanthodrilus species. 



It may be noted that there is no doubt of any kind that the 

 specimens examined by myself in every case are the same which 



