82: PERIPATUS AND ITS OCCURRENCE IN AUSTRALIA ; 
existed without having left in the rocks any sign of its occurrence 
—its nature is not such as to permit it to have become fossilised at 
the time when they were formed. It still, however, as has been 
pointed out, is to be found in certain spots on the earth’s surface, 
widely separated, where it is to be met with under almost 
precisely similar conditions. In intermediate districts Peripatus 
may yet still exist, but probably in most of these it has died out. 
Prof. Moseley writes, ‘I am not without hope that its horny jaws 
may some day turn up in the fossil condition in strata older than 
the carboniferous, for of such age must Peripatus oe if it be a 
representative of Protracheata.”* 
An Australia species of Peripatus was described by N. Seenger 
in 1869 under the name Peripatus Leuckarti, sf. zov.t This fact 
seems to have escaped the notice of compilers of the “ Zoological 
Record,” but Dr. Rud. Leuchart refers to it in the ‘‘ Archir fur 
Naturgeschichte” for 1871, as has been pointed out to me by Mr. 
T. Whitelegge, of the Australian Museum. Several writers appear 
to have been familiar with the fact that Senger published a minute 
anatomical investigation of two species of Peripatus, but his 
memoir being in Russian they do not seem to have derived the 
information, which it contains, of the ‘‘ New Holland” habitat of 
one of the species dealt with, H. N. Moseley, however, knew 
that this was so, for he writes “he might have added Australia to 
the list of regions in which Peripatus occurs,” } commenting on an 
ommission made in the ‘“ Observations on Perpatus Nove- 
zealandize” of Capt. Hutton; and again he writes, “In the 
Australian and New Zealand species the number of feet seems 
fixed.”§ 
The reported Australian habitat of Peripatus, however, was not 
confirmed until 1886, in which year the writer found two examples 
in a miscellaneous collection of invertebrates preserved in spirits, 
and forwarded from the Cardwell district by Mr. Kendal Broad- 
bent, the collector of the Queensland Museum. Drawings of these 
immediately transmitted to Mr Broadbent, whilst still in the 
Cardwell district, failed to recall to his memory the fact that he 
had actually found these two examples, much less the spot whence 
they came, and accordingly no more specimens were procured 
* Ann. and Mag. of N.H., Vol. XIX.. 1877. 
+ Verhand]l der ersten russ Naturforscher versammlung zu Moskau, Abth. 
Zool. S, 1869, 237-262. 
+ Ann. and Mag. N.H. 4th Ser., Vol. XIX., p. 85, 1877. 
§ op. cit. 5th Ser, Vol, JII., p. 263, 1879. 
