Art. V. — Preliminary Notes on Tasnianian EartJnvoniis. 

 (With Plates I., II., III., IV. and V.) 



By Baldwin Spencer, 



Pi'ofessor of Biology in the University of Melbourne. 

 [Kead 8th March, 1894.] 



In two previous communications to this Society I have 

 described as preliminary to a joint work by Mr. Fletcher of 

 Sydney and myself on the Earthworm fauna of Australia the 

 species of Megascolides, Cryptodrilus and Perichpeta which had up 

 to the date of publication been found in Victoria. Tliis evening 

 I describe a series of Earthworms from Tasmania, and I have to 

 thank Mr. A. Simson, of Launceston, Mr. A. Morton, of the 

 Tasmanian Museum, and Mr. C. G. Officer, B.Sc, of the 

 Melbourne University, for valuable assistance in collecting. To 

 Mr. Morton I am indebted for several forms, and especially for 

 specimens of the large Alegascolides tas/nanianus, described by 

 Mr. .J. J. Fletcher. My own collecting has been done on Mount 

 Wellington, around Dee Bridge, amongst the mountains in the 

 Lake St. Olair district, around Parattah, and to a small extent 

 along the north coast in the neighbourhood of Table Cape and 

 Emu Bay. A visit of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria to 

 King Island, enabled me to collect 5ne or two forms in this spot 

 half-way between the continent and Tasmania. The search has 

 not yielded so many forms as I had hoped and expected to find, a 

 result which may possibly be due to the fact that it has been 

 carried on during the summer, but Mr. Officer informs me that 

 earthworms were much more numerous along the King River 

 Valley amongst the western mountain ranges, than in the region 

 of Lake St. Clair, where we were camped out for some four 

 weeks in the early part of 1893. 



The same three genera to which our Australian species are 

 provisionally referred are all represented in Tasmania, and to 



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