382 ARTHUR PENDY. 



laid, owiug to the unfavourable conditions wliicli resulted 

 in the death of the parent. 



Number of Eggs produced; Size and Shape. — The 

 number of eggs produced by the different species of 

 Ouychophora appears, as in other animals, to be inversely 

 proportional to the amount of yolk, and consequently to the 

 size of the egg. Thus in the viviparous P. Leukartii 

 (New South Wales) the ovarian egg is comparatively small 

 and with little yolk, the largest ovarian egg which I have 

 seen measuring only about 0'37 mm. in greatest diameter,^ 

 while I have myself found as many as thirty embryos in 

 the uteri of one female, and Mr. Fletcher (7) has found as 

 many as fifty-three. In P. novse-zealandiae the egg, 

 according to Miss Sheldon, measures as much as 1"5 mm. in 

 greatest diameter, and in this species, which is also viviparous, 

 Captain Hutton (1) found from four to twenty-six embryos 

 in each female, and Miss Sheldon from seven to eighteen. 

 In 0. oviparus the eggs are a little larger, measuring (in 

 the oviduct and when laid) about TO by 1*5 mm., while the 

 number found in the two oviducts varied from six to seven- 

 teen. In 0. viridimaculatus the eggs are perhaps a shade 

 longer and somewhat narrower in proportion to their length, 

 and the number produced appears to be still smaller, the 

 three females dissected containing respectively only one, 

 three, and seven eggs in the two oviducts. 



The eggs are deposited in the winter or in the late autumn, 

 which perhaps accounts for the fact that in the only specimen 

 of 0. oviparus captured and dissected at the end of July, 

 the oviducts were found to be empty. 



Only one batch of deposited eggs of 0. oviparus and a 

 single deposited egg of 0. viridimaculatus have, as yet, 

 so far as I am aware, been obtained. The former was laid 

 (at any rate fourteen of them) between May 18th and 

 July 31st, 1891, in a vivarium in Melbourne, in which there 

 were three females and one male animal. Fourteen eggs 



' As 1 have carefully examined the ovarian eggs in only one specimen, killed 

 in January, this result needs coufiniialion. 



