186 A VIVIPAROUS AUSTRALIAN PERIPATUS, 



daring the day time; and if only a fair proportion of the adult 

 females lay their eggs in July of any given year, and if at the end 

 of October following only a fair proportion of young are hatched 

 therefrom — and we have it on high authority that the eggs are 

 laid in July, and that the young are hatched at the end of 

 October — it follows that except perhaps in very unfavourable 

 years there ought annually to be a large accession to the Victorian 

 Peripatus fauna just about October 31st: yet if the entire human 

 population of Victoria were to turn out en masse and for a period 

 of one month, six weeks, two months, and for how much longer 

 we have not yet been told, dating from November 1st, were to 

 devote themselves enthusiastically and exclusively to a search, 

 over the whole area of the colony of Victoria, for the young of 

 the Victorian Peripatus just hatching or newly hatched from eggs 

 laid in July previous, the enthusiasts would find themselves 

 engaged in a quest not less fruitless than if the same amount of 

 time and energy had been given to the acquisition of specimens 

 of the famous Australian bunyip. There are no bunyips to be 

 captured in the Australian bush nowadays, neither at the time 

 and under the circumstances mentioned are there any newly 

 hatched young of P. leuckartii, for the latter are then as intensely 

 " cryptozoic" and as altogether non-existent as the former. Then 

 what a beautiful instance of unerring skill in forecasting the 

 future, and in being able, at the first time of asking and on such 

 slender evidence, to fix so precisely, not on the beginning nor on 

 the middle, but on the end of October as the time when the impossible 

 happens, is presented in the passage quoted ; what an innocent- 

 looking pitfall for the unwary — writer of a textbook it may be ; 

 and what a splendid chance of supplementing the catalogue of 

 topsy-turvy biological and other arrangements prevailing at the 

 Antipodes, given by the late Mr. Barron Field who says, "But 

 this is New Holland .... where the kangaroo, an animal 

 between the squirrel and the deer, has five claws on its fore-paws, 

 and three talons on its hind-legs, like a bird, and yet hops on its 

 tail ; . . . . where the pears are made of wood, with the 

 stalk at the broader end ; and where the cherry grows with the 

 stone outside" (pp. 4G1-462) ! 



