$44 NOTES ON AUSTRALIAN EARTHWORMS, 



apart from their insular habitat, I give such particulars about them 

 as I can, in the hope that any one who has the chance of visiting 

 this island will make an effort to collect earthworms. 



At Darnley Island in Torres Straits about 80 miles from the New 

 Guinea coast, and 27 miles from Murray Island, also during the 

 voyage of the 'Chevert,' Mr. Masters obtained two good specimens 

 of a typical perichsete worm, which I have described under the 

 name of Perichceta Darnleiensis. 



The discovery of earthworms in these two small islands is not 

 without interest, because these animals have not been hitherto 

 recorded from any locality nearer to us than the much more 

 extensive island of New Caledonia, though there can be little doubt 

 that they are to be found in New Guinea. 



The other earthworms in the Macleay Museum have recently 

 been collected by Mr! Froggatt in the neighbourhood of Cairns, 

 North Queensland. There are specimens of various stages belonging 

 to three species, of which I am able to give descriptions of two, one 

 of them a typical ferichceta, while the other is more like the species 

 met with further south. The third species is represented by two 

 small and immature specimens to which reference is made later on. 



Of the other worms described in this paper, one is in all proba- 

 bility an introduced species, while the other five are indigenous 

 to New South Wales, and, with one exception, have been obtained 

 within a radius of 20 miles from Sydney. Two of them are worms 

 somewhat similar in appearance, and having eight rows of setse, 

 but one of them has two gizzards and is referred to Perrier's genus 

 Digaster, while the other has but one, and provisionally is referred 

 to the genus Cryjrtodrilus. The remaining three are new species of 

 the genus Perichceta. 



The nine species of earthworms which I have now described as 

 belonging to the genus Perichceta, fall into two very well-marked 

 groups ; one of them characterised by the possession of complete 

 circles of seta3, by the presence of a pair of conspicuous caeca 

 given off by the large intestine in segments xxv or xxvi, by the 

 absence of the mesentery between the two segments containing the 

 gizzard, and by having the latter organ situated a segment or two 



