388 



A MONOGRAPH OF THE AUSTRALIAN MARSIPO- 

 DRANCHII. 



By J. Douglas Ogilby. 



In the present paper I have endeavoured to reduce to some 

 appearance of order the history of the Australasian Lampreys and 

 such meagre and for the most part inaccurate literature as 

 appertains thereto. It is undeniable that some such work had 

 become necessary owing to the diversity of the views held by the 

 vai'ious writers who have approached the subject, and which cul- 

 minated in the recognition by Sir William Macleay of four genera 

 and six species, two of the former and an equal number of the 

 latter having been founded on ammocretal or immature individuals; 

 this list I have found it necessary to reduce to three genera, each 

 of which is represented 1)y a single species. 



The first author to whom the honour of recoi'ding the existence 

 of a hyperoartian Marsipobranchiate in the southern hemisphere 

 is due is Sir John Richardson, who, under the name of 

 Petromyzon mordax, described and figured a species in the 

 Ichthyology of the Erebus and Terror; six years later Dr. John 

 Edward Gray published a " Synopsis of the PetromyzonidcE " in 

 the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, in which 

 Richardson's species is made the type of a new genus Mordacia, 

 while for a closely allied form from the rivers of Chile a second 

 genus, Caragola, is proposed. Besides these the same paper con- 

 tains descriptions and figures of two other austrogeean genera, 

 namely, Geotria, founded on a specimen picked up on the beach 

 in Hobson's Bay [see jj. 425) by Mr. R. A. Pain, and by him for- 

 warded to the British Museum; and Velasia, the type of which 

 was a Chilian specimen in the collection of the same institution. 



In a series of three papers (1857-1863) Philippi gave some 

 particulars as to the Chilian Lampreys, and described two 

 new species as Petromyzon anwandieri and acutidens ; these 

 papers appeared in Wiegmann's Archiv. 



