Art. XIV". — Notes on some Victorian Land Planarians^ 



(With Plates XI and XII.) 



By W. Baldwin Spekcee, M.A. 



Professor of Biology, University of Melbourne. 



[Eead December II, 1890.] 



The Planarians, with which this paper deals, were collected 

 during the month of November by the members of a party 

 from the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, which had gone 

 out to collect in the country lying between Marysville and 

 the source of the Yarra along the Wood's Point Road. 



The country is heavily timbered, has numberless fallen 

 logs, endless gullies, a considerable rainfall, and is eminently 

 suited to planarian life. Certain forms were plentiful, and 

 it may be noticed that these were principally the darker 

 coloured ones, such as Geoplana spenceri, which, in parts, 

 was found under almost every log turned over, and two new 

 species to be hereafter described. There was a noticeable 

 absence of the light-coloured species, in which the prevailing 

 body colour is of a yellow tint. Such, in ])arts of Gippsland 

 for example, are seen crawling about in the open, whilst 

 not one was seen by us in this district of the compara- 

 tively common form G. sugdeni, and only few examples 

 of 6r. viediolineata and hogii. The only light- coloured 

 one at all common was G. alba, which showed numerous 

 variations from the typical cream- white colour, the 

 specimens varying from dark cream to a warm shade of 

 brownish flesh-colour, sometimes being even more grey than 

 brown. On only one occasion was a specimen seen crawling 

 out in the open, and this was a G. spenceri, climbing a tree, 

 and at a height of five feet from the ground. 



Messrs. Fletcher and Hamilton for New South Wales, and 

 Mr. Dendy for Victoria, have named the specimens as yet 

 secured in the two colonies. 



