474 RICHARD EVANS. 



I. Introduction. 



Peripatus, althougli found in the islands of the Malay 

 and Melauesian Ai'chipelagos, in Sumatra and New Britain, 

 has not been hitherto discovered on the mainland of the 

 Asiatic continent. Dr. R. Horst (8) recorded a specimen 

 from Sumatra in 1886. The specimen in question was subse- 

 quently named P. sumatranus by Sedgwick (15). Several 

 years (1898) afterwards Dr. Arthur Willey described a 

 species which he himself collected in New Britain (17, 18). 



The general characters of the Sumatran species are those 

 common to all the Neotropical forms of Peripatus. But 

 Dr. Willey points out that, though New Britain is geographi- 

 cally an intermediate locality between Sumatra and the Neo- 

 tropical region, the New Britain species does not possess a 

 single external character of importance in common with the 

 Neotropical forms, although by a singular coincidence the 

 female has the same number of claw-bearing legs — twenty- 

 four pairs — as the alleged Sumatran specimen. Dr. Willey 

 further remarks that under the circumstances the evidence 

 that the latter was found in Sumatra, which Sedgwick re- 

 gards as inconclusive, must appear more than ever worthy of 

 suspicion. The material which will be described in the 

 present account will show that the doubt expressed by Mr. 

 Sedgwick, and subsequently by Dr. Willey, was not well 

 founded, though it was, under the circumstances, justifiable. 

 While the New Britain species possesses no single exte>"nal 

 feature in common with the Neotropical forms, the Malay 

 species described in the following pages, on the contrary, 

 ao-ree in almost all the most important external characters 

 with the Neotropical forms as well as with the Sumatran. 

 This fact of itself goes far to prove that Dr. Horst's speci- 

 men really came from Sumatra. 



At one time it was supposed that the various species of 

 Peripatidge could be ai-rauged in groups in accordance with 

 their geographical distribution (15). Mr. Sedgwick described 



