180 A VIVIPAROUS AUSTRALIAN PERIPATUS, 



in the number of legs, it is very fairly represented by his figure 

 thereof (Phil. Trans. Vol. clxiv, pi. lxxv, fig. 3). 



Moseley's observation is now nearly twenty years old, but to 

 this day the correctness of his conclusion is undisputed. There- 

 fore, in the case of the Australian specimen which in July, 1888, 

 I gave to Dr. Has well, who a few days later found it to be, full of 

 far-advanced embryos, told me of his experience, promised me one 

 of the embryos, and a few weeks later fulfilled his promise, it is 

 not at all clear to me what other conclusion any sane individual 

 could possibly have arrived at under such circumstances than that 

 it, too, was viviparous ; or, this being so, what there was about 

 this simple fact in any way more remarkable or in any way 

 affording better cause for undue excitement and exultation than 

 that John Gould or his predecessors should have actually found 

 that Australian birds, like birds in other countries, were unques- 

 tionably oviparous. 



Moseley calls such a specimen as that he refers to, a pregnant 

 specimen ; and I have said of the Australian specimen in question 

 that on dissection it proved to be pregnant, as anyone will see on 

 turning to the Proceedings of this Society for 1888 [Vol. iii. (2nd 

 ss.). Part 2, p. 892, footnote] ; and as Dr. Haswell, who made the 

 dissection, is, I am glad to say, still in Sydnej', I need not enlarge on 

 the subject of the agreement of the statement with the facts ; it 

 suflB.ces to say that not only had a pregnant specimen been met 

 with as far back as the year 1888, but that the fact is on record. 



And this was only the first of a series of experiences, each by 

 itself sufficient to establish the undoubtedly viviparous nature of 

 the Peripatus with which we had to deal, and which has never 

 been called anything but P. leuckartii. But even so, what was 

 there to make a fuss about 1 No unprejudiced critic can deny 

 that to anyone of the stamp of O. W. Holmes's youthful 

 correspondent, " who longed to leap at a single bound into 

 celebrity," there certainly was here presented an opportunity of 

 gaining, if not celebrity, at least a little cheap notoriety, or, 

 failing that, an inexpensive method of putting himself abundantly 

 en evidence on very slight provocation. Otherwise, and as Peripatus 

 was viviparous all along the line, and the Australian P. leuckartii 



