354 NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN LAND-PLANARIANS, 



may be referred to the geni;s Geoplana as at present defined, we 

 venture to express the opinion that the retention of Ccenoplana is 

 unnecessary. 



Of the habits of Australian planarians we have as yet been able 

 to learn very little. Thirty years ago Fritz Miiller, writing to 

 Schultze about Brazilian planarians, says : " They like moderately 

 moist places, under wood, bark, and stones, and between leaves of 

 the Bromeliace£e. They appear to rest by day, and to crawl about 

 dui'ing the night." (1) Omitting the reference to the Bromeliacese 

 these remarks are applicable to Australian planarians, and we 

 have little to add to them. Mr. Moseley, both in Ceylon and in 

 Brazil, found planai^ians under fallen leaves and resting beneath 

 the sheathing leaves of the banana plants ; in Brazil also crawling 

 on palm stems in the daytime in very rainy weather, but in places 

 where there was very little light ; at the Cape on American 

 Agaves ; and in Australia " they were found during the day coiled 

 up in cavities under fallen logs, and at night observed with a 

 lantern, crawling on the trunks of Eucalypts, especially about 

 wounds from which sap was exuding." Most of our specimens 

 have been obtained by turning over logs, pieces of wood and bark, 

 and stones, when the planarians were found either on the ground, 

 or adhering to the undersurface of the logs, &c., sometimes in the 

 cracks and crevices even of charred logs. Once at Mt. Wilson 

 towards the close of a wet day we discovered a specimen of 

 G. ccBTulea crawling across the road. On another occasion we 

 found a specimen crawling on a dead tree under loose bark ; 

 several times crawling over stones in damp weather, and in one 

 case a specimen of G. viridis on a blade of grass exposed to 

 sunshine ; but we have not yet met with them abroad at night. 



In dry weather they probably burrow in the ground. We have 

 frequently found them in the soil, and at first in trying to keep 

 living ones in confinement one of us tried placing them in inverted 



(1) Abhancl. der Naturf. Gesell. in Halle, Vol. IV, 1857. Translated in 

 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (2), xx, 1857, p. 3. 



