BY J. J. FLETCHER. 181 



simply and naturally came up into line, there was just as little 

 need to rush into print with sensational announcements about it 

 as there is for an ornithologist who finds the previously unknown 

 eggs of an already described bird, or a previously undescribed 

 bird and its eggs, with a flourish of trumpets to flood the scientific 

 journals with announcements of a new and rare discovery. A 

 brief but correct record of the matter was made for future 

 guidance ; and that was sufficient. 



At this time Dr. Dendy and the Australian Peripatus were 

 strangers and had not met ; one could not therefore he expected 

 to provide against such a contingency as that on July 31st, 1891, 

 a Victorian naturalist should arise and say with an emphasis which 

 quite settles the matter, that Peripatus leuckartii, the common 30- 

 legged Peripatus of Eastern Australia, is not viviparous at all, that 

 it difiers widely in this respect from all other known species, and 

 that before the date mentioned nobody knew anything whatever 

 about its mode of reproduction, or as he puts it, " Hitherto [i.e., 

 prior to July 31sfc, 1891] little has been known of its habits, and 

 nothing of its mode of reproduction " ; in reply to which I may 

 say that, as regards the New South Wales Peripatus, at least, 

 while all this is both entertaining and amusing, the Victorian 

 naturalist in question seems to have arrived a little late on the 

 scene, and to have got ofi" the track and to have lost himself en 

 route, because there is no difficulty whatever in proving, even to 

 his satisfaction, that the New South Wales Peripatus was 

 viviparous in 18S8, that it is still viviparous in 1892, and that in 

 the interval it was also viviparous ; or that it does not differ, and 

 within the period mentioned has not difl^erej, from extra- 

 Australian species in respect of its viviparity. 



In four recent papers* [Nature, Sept. 17th, 1891 ; Victorian 

 Naturalist, Sept., 1891 ; Proc. Roy. Soc. of Victoria, Vol. iv. n.s. 



* These are severally entitled : "An Oviparous Species of Peripatus" 

 [the only Australian species referred to in the text being P. leuckartii] ; 

 "The Mode of Reproduction of P. leuckartii" ; "On the Oviparity of P. 

 leuckartii" ; and " The Reproduction of P. leuckartii." In two of them P. 

 insignis is referred to as " the only other Australian species "or " the only 

 other known Australian species." 



