179 



PAPERS READ. 



A VIVIPAROUS AUSTRALIAN PERIPATUS {P. 

 LEUCKARTII, Saeng.) 



By J. J. Fletcher, M.A., B.Sc. 



For some years past a species of Peripatus has been known to 

 occur in New South Wales ; and no one has ever said of it that 

 after studying Sedgwick's full description of Perijjatus leuckartii 

 he was fairly certain that it did not belong to that species, but to 

 a new one. On the contrary, no one has ever called it, or proposed 

 to call it, by any other name than P. leuckartii, Sang. Further, 

 on the ijjse dixit of Dr. Dendy himself it is to be called P. 

 leuckartii ; for in two recent papers he quite authoritatively says 

 that P. insignis is " the only other known Australian species " : 

 but P. leuckartii has fifteen pairs of walking legs, and P. insignis 

 has fourteen pairs ; and no Peripatus with other than fifteen 

 pairs has hitherto been recorded from New South Wales. Now 

 this New South Wales Peripatus, which even according to Dr. 

 Dendy is P. leuckartii, and which has never been otherwise 

 designated, is not only as viviparous as P. capensis, for example, 

 but there has not been, since the year 1888, the slightest room for 

 any doubt on the subject, for, among others, the simple and 

 suflELcient reason that the very first specimen of it that was ever 

 opened, in the month of July, 1888, proved to be in the same 

 interesting condition as the first specimen of P. capensis dissected 

 in 1873 by Moseley, who says that on opening it he "found the 

 animal to be viviparous, and full of far-advanced embryos." Nor 

 is this mere assertion on my part, as I shall presently show, for 

 one of the Australian Peripatus embryos was preserved by Dr. 

 Haswell, who gave it to me in October, 1888, and it has remained 

 in my possession ever since. This embryo is approximately at the 

 same stage of development as one of Moseley's advanced Cape 

 embryos just referred to, and, allowing for the specific difference 



