ON BIPALIUM KEWENSE, MOSELEY. 53 



On Bipalium kewense, Moseley. By Charles Hogg. 



[Read 29tli December, 1S96.] 



Bipalium kewense, Moseley, is a land planarian of foreign 

 origin. It was first discovered in 1865 at the Botanic Gardens, 

 Giessen, and again in a hothouse at Kew, and described in the 

 year 1878 by Professor Moseley, F.R.S. {Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History^ \o\. i., Fifth Series, p. 237). The following 

 is the description : — 



" Body slightly rounded above, flat beneath, slightly narrower 

 just behind the head, and tapering very gradually posteriorly, to 

 terminate in a long and slender hinder extremity ; with a narrow 

 but well-marked ambulacral line. Lunate head of moderate size, 

 about twice as broad as the part of the body immediately behind 

 it. General colour of the body light ochre-yellow above ; beneath 

 very pale, almost white. Five dark violet stripes, a mesial and 

 two pairs of lateral, extending along the entire length of the 

 dorsal surface. The mesial stripe narrow and linear, the succeed- 

 ing pair broad and band-like, and the outermost pair again linear. 

 The outermost pair placed at a short distance from the lateral 

 margin of the upper surface, and the band-like pair at half the 

 distance between these and the central stripe. Just behind the 

 head the two lateral bands on either side fuse together, and form 

 a pair of broad dark patches." '•' Faint and narrow violet stripes 

 mark the margin of the ambulacral line on the under surface of 

 the bodv. 



1/ 



"Length of single specimen, 9 inches; extreme breadth of the 

 body, i inch ; of the head, i inch." 



Dr. Albert Giinther, of the British Museum, refers in the 

 Gardener^ s Chronicle to a specimen obtained at Welbeck Gardens 

 in 1883; and again reference is made to this species in the same 

 journal by Mr. F. Jeffrey Bell in 1886 as appearing at Fernhurst, 

 Haslemere, and at Clapham Park. 



