4.4.6 W. BLAXLAND BENHAM. 
great thickness,—being, in fact, relatively thin. A second 
feature, and one that leads to some difficulty in assigning the 
organs to their proper position, is the amount of secondary 
annulation presented by the segments in the anterior part 
of the body, and in the assumption by these annuli of the 
appearance of true segments; so great, indeed, is the resem- 
blance, and so deep are the interannular grooves, that an ex- 
ternal examination alone is absolutely insufficient to enable 
one to tell what are ‘‘ annuli” and what are “‘ segments.” This 
secondary ringing of the primary segments deceived Michaelsen 
in his descriptions of the two earlier species, K. madagas- 
cariensis and K. longus; and he attributed to certain in- 
ternal organs a position so different from that occupied by 
these organs in all known earthworms, that I was led to 
suggest that he had mistaken ‘“‘annuli” for ‘ segments” or 
“somites.”! Almost at the same time Rosa showed, from an 
examination of a new species, K. michaelsenii, that Michael- 
sen had indeed fallen into this error; and Michaelsen himself, 
in describing a fourth species, acknowledged that this had been 
the case. But, as we shall see below, we are even now in some 
doubt as to the extent and limits of this ‘‘ annulation of the 
segments ”—at any rate, in four out of the five species—so far 
as the first few segments of the body are concerned. 
In the bottle sent to me were three portions, each about nine 
inches (225 mm.) in length; each is the anterior part of a 
worm of much greater length, probably at least eighteen or 
twenty inches. Each piece consists of some three hundred or 
more segments. 
One of these three pieces is of especial interest, as it is 
genitally mature, and is provided with a clitellum—a structure 
observed, hitherto, only in K. michaelsenii, and there of 
much less extent than in the present species, the specific 
name of which refers to the great extent of this organ. This 
specimen, and one of the other two, also possessed a large 
everted copulatory organ of relatively enormous dimensions—a 
1 Beuham, “ Description of Three New Species of Karthworms,” ‘ Proc. 
Zool. Soc.,’ 1892, p. 149. 
