538 NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN EARTHWORMS, 



into good methylated spirit, or packed with due allowance of space 

 in a tin box or wide bottle with a small amount of earth and plenty 

 of damp moss. 



Ferrier (1) has divided earthworms into three groups, viz. 

 Lumbricini anteclitellini, L. intraclitellini, and L. postclitellini^ 

 according as the male pores are situated in front of, within, 

 or behind, the clitellum or girdle. It is interesting to find 

 that there are Australian representatives of all three groups. Too 

 little is known of Australian earthworms to attempt to generalise 

 at present, but there are one or two points that may be noticed. 

 The occurrence of the genus Zumbricus in Australia is interesting, 

 because at present it is not known from Asia or the East Indies, 

 though it occurs in N. and S. America, and at the Cape. On the 

 other hand, there are indications that the genus Perichceta, which 

 may be said to have its head-quarters in Asia and the East Indies, 

 is well represented in Australia, while it is represented at 

 present by a single species in S. America. Again the genus 

 Acanthodrilus occurs both in New Caledonia and New Zealand, 

 yet so far it has not been met with in Australia ; this however, 

 may be simply due to want of more careful search. Intraclitellian 

 worms were first described by Perrier from S. America; subse. 

 quently several Asiatic genera were added to this group. The 

 Australian intraclitellian worms described in this paper have no 

 particular affinity with any of the described genera. 



Among the points of interest presented by the worms which I 

 have examined, the following is perhaps most noteworthy, though 

 possibly some allowance must be made for the sexual inactivity of 

 some of them : in all of them the vasa deferentia are quite inde- 

 pendent of the testes (or seminal reservoirs in L. Novae- Hollandiai), 

 and (except in the last named species) the two pairs of testes are 

 either in consecutive segments (xi and xil), or two segments 

 intervene between these, which are then in ix and xn, but in 

 both cases the two pairs of " ciliated rosettes" or vas deferens 



(1) Nouv. Arch, du Mus. Paris, Tom. vm, 1872, p. 43. 





