196 A VIVIPAROUS AUSTRALIA.N PERIPATUS. 



1891, certainly the events of that day were not likely to advance 

 our knowledge at all. 



The field open to biologists in Australia is wide enough, and 

 the number of workers is few enough, to allow of abundance of 

 fruitful material still being available ; and it is quite possible 

 even at the present day to go on a voyage of discovery in Eastern 

 Australia, or even to aspire to fill the role of a Biological Captain 

 Cook. But under such circumstances it would not seem at all 

 necessary to allow zeal to run away with discretion, or to discover 

 too much, or to suppose any one grossly incapable in not finding 

 the hypothetical eggs supposed to have been laid by a viviparous 

 specimen of Peripatus, even though the opportunity of doing so 

 suppositiously lasted over four months and the deposited eggs of 

 P. leuckarlii are "easily seen, being fairly large," or even "very 

 large"; nor in exposing the crass ignorance of other people would 

 it be advisable to forget that one's own statements should be free 

 from grave errors ; nor as a prognosticator would it be worth 

 while to be so painfully accurate in fixing the date almost to a 

 day on which the young of the oviparous P. leuckartii do not by 

 any chance hatch, or the exact number of months, after the 

 ■deposition of the eggs, in which the young of P. leuckartii cannot 

 possibly complete their development. 



And since Dr. Dendy has quite settled matters relating to the 

 mode of reproduction of the Australian Peripatus on a firm basis, 

 and has proved quite conclusively, to his own satisfaction at least, 

 that P. leuckartii, the common Australian Peripatus with fifteen 

 pairs of walking legs, is oviparous and diifers widely in its mode 

 of reproduction from all other known species, it now only remains 

 for him to push his conclusions to a logical end by showing in 

 what a far-reaching and revolutionary manner prevalent notions 

 on the subject of the mode of reproduction of extra-Australian 

 species of Peripatus are affected thereby. For inasmuch as the 

 N.S.W. Pei-ipatus is not P. insignis it must be P. leuckartii, 

 which Dr. Dendy has shown to be oviparous ; and it entirely agrees 

 as to its mode of reproduction with P. capensis, with P. halfouri, 

 with P. novce-zealandice, with P. demeraranus, with P. edwardsii, 

 and with P. torquatus, for instance, therefore, «fec. 



