MEGASCOLEX TEMPLETON. 485 



tails , and points out that the knowledge of the number , 

 the situation and the shape of the copulatory pouches is 

 of great value to recognize the different species. In the 

 year 1875 the same author made a preliminary communi- 

 cation ^) about some new species of Megascolex (Peri- 

 chaeta) from the Philippine-Islands, in which he stated 

 that the number of segments , composing the girdle , not 

 always amounts to three, but in some species counts only 

 two , whereas in other ones it reaches four ; moreover he 

 observed that in two of these species the bristles are not 

 present on the whole circumference of the body but that 

 they there fail on the ventral side. However we must wait 

 for his more detailed communications before being able to 

 decide if those species really must be ranged under the 

 genus Megascolex. Yet it may be added that the arran- 

 gement of the bristles is not quite the same in all species, 

 as I examined a species from Sumatra {M. Hasselti n. s.) 

 that has its bristles ou the ventral side not placed on equal dis- 

 tance as those of the back , but crowded together in two 

 groups , one on each side of the mesial line of the belly. This 

 peculiar arrangement of the bristles is associated with a parti- 

 cular structure of the longitudinal muscle-bands , which show 

 on transverse sections the shape of a feather , quite like the 

 longitudinal muscles of Lumhricus , a structure which hitherto 

 has not been observed in any other species of Megascolex. 

 Several species of the genus Megascolex (Perichaeta), na- 

 tives of the Oriental , Australian , Aethiopical and Neotropi- 

 cal Regions ^), already have been described, but some of those 

 descriptions are short and incomplete , and in other ones we 



1) Compt. Rend. T. LXXXI , p. 1043. 



2) The species forwarded to Üarwin from Nice , and those met with by 

 Baird and Vaillant in hot-houses in England and France, may not be taken 

 account of, being certainly introduced with plants from tropical regions. Those 

 examples tell us that earthworms, though destitute of means of moving and 

 confined to the soil in which they live, are very easily transported with plants 

 from one country into another, and we may be very cautious in making conclu- 

 sions from their geographical distribution with regard to the a;eological condition 

 of lands in past epochs. (Vide Ray Lankester, Phil. Trans. R. S. Vol. 168, p. 264). 



Notes from the Leyden IMuseuixi, Vol. V. 



