BY J. J. FLETCHER, M.A., B.SC. 247 



In respect of size some of our specimens are as large, if not 

 larger than Professor Moseley's example, which was 9 inches long. 

 I measured a living one, which, when extended, was 14 inches 

 long. Eleven spirit specimens from the nursery referred to were 

 from 4'2 to 12 cm. long and from 3-5 mm. broad anteriorly, 

 diminishing posteriorly by about 1 mm. 



In regard to colour, Sydney specimens agree with those 

 examined by Professors Moseley and Bell in having the same 

 number and arrangement of longitudinal bands, &c., but I notice 

 in different living examples, and usually in different portions of 

 the same animal, a considerable variation in the intensity of the 

 colouring, as well as in the width of some of the stripes. Usually 

 the stripes are uniformly darker and more intensely coloured in the 

 anterior half or third of the body, and may frequently be described 

 as black. The median stripe is sometimes a very fine line ; at other 

 times, even in the same animal, it becomes as wide as the first 

 lateral band on each side. Further back, all the bands may 

 uniformly become paler and dimmer, and assume a brownish tint, 

 or the median and outer lateral bands may be conspicuously 

 darker, while the inner bands fade to a darker shade of the 

 ground colour or are hardly perceptible. In a young living 

 specimen (46 mm. long and 2 mm. broad when extended) the 

 outermost bands vanished altogether in the posterior region of 

 the body. In one case the ground colour between the median 

 and first lateral stripe on each side was of a conspicuously darker 

 colour. 



The anterior margin of the cheese-cutter-shaped head when the 

 animal is \;rawling sends off inferiorly, sensory, papilla-like pro- 

 longations with which it touches the surface on which it is 

 crawling, just as Humbert and Moseley describe in other species. 

 In his remarks Professor Bell points out that, when the animal is 

 in a state of torpid quiescence, the head is contracted and obtusely 

 pointed, and he insists rather emphatically on this variation 

 from the cheese-cutter form of the head which characterises the 

 genus Bipalium. I have recently had the opportunity of examin- 

 ing a large number of land-planarians belonging to some twenty 



