1894. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 325 



when Dr. Giinther showed a few examples of the American 

 Lepidosiren pavadoxa. Considerable doubts in the minds of some 

 people hung over the real existence of an American Dipnoid as 

 distinct from the well-known African Pi'otopterus. Dr. Howard Ayers, 

 of the United States, dechned to beheve in its separate individuaHty. 

 A few years ago {Zool. Jahrhicher, 1887) Dr. Baur emphasised the 

 distinctness of the American from the African fish, and there is now 

 not the faintest doubt about the matter. On all hands, however, it 

 was admitted that the Lepidosiren of South America was a rare 

 animal. According to Dr. Baur there were only four specimens of 

 the fish in European Museums in 1887. Since then Professor GiglioU 

 has got others, and the total number is increased by a quantity of 

 specimens in the hands of a London dealer. But all this time in certain 

 districts of Paraguay Lepidosiren was a common article of food. Few 

 though the specimens of the Lepidosiren were in the Museums of this 

 part of the world (apparently there were none at all in Rio de 

 Janeiro), they succeeded in getting two names : it was attempted to 

 distinguish L. dissimilis from L. paradoxa. The rarity of the fish 

 induced various legends. It was reported by Saint Hilaire, on the 

 authority of a Brazihan gentleman, that the Lepidosiren inhabited 

 the great depths of huge lakes, into the waters of which, hke the 

 celebrated Snapping Turtle, it was able to drag horses and horned 

 cattle. The native name was Minhocao, which signifies " large earth- 

 worm." And a further legend (no doubt derived from the name) 

 shifted the scene of its operations to the soil, from which, as it passed 

 through, it uprooted trees. Nothing more has been recently heard 

 about this terrestrial sea-serpent ; but there is no longer any room for 

 doubt that the American Lepidosiren is an altogether distinct form 

 from the African Protopterus. 



In the fish exhibited at the Zoological Society Dr. Giinther and 

 Mr. Howes pointed out the curious peculiarity that the hind limbs of 

 the male were ornamented with numerous branched villous processes. 

 Figures of these were subsequently published by Professor E. Ray 

 Lankester in Nature for April 12. Nothing of the kind is to be seen 

 in its ally, the mud-fish of Africa, 



A Blood-Sucking (?) Earthworm. 

 Speaking of wild beasts that are at once large, ferocious, and 

 African, a correspondent sends us an interesting note about an earth- 

 worm. Africa has already produced the largest earthworm {Micro- 

 chcEta rappi) known to science, with the possible exception of Megascolides 

 australis from Australia ; but these are giants of a perfectly harmless 

 kind. The worm to which we now refer is said, by Mr. Alvan 

 Millson, Assistant Colonial Secretary at Lagos, on the West Coast 

 of Africa, to inspire dread among the natives of that coast. Its 

 appearance is against it : the worm is not only large — three or four feet 



