DISTRIBUTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF ONYCHOPHORA. 379 
The Distribution and Classification of the 
Onychophora. 
By 
Adam Sedgwick, M.A. F.R.S., 
Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the University 
of Cambridge. 
With 13 Figures. 
THe genus Peripatus, so.far as adult conformation is 
concerned, is a very homogeneous one. It was pointed 
out by me in 1888 that the species from the same part of 
the world resembled each other more closely than they 
do species from other regions, and that the species in this 
way fall into discontinuous groups which were defined in the 
monograph then published. Since the publication of that 
monograph, specimens have been recorded from two other 
regions, viz. New Britain and Equatorial Africa, and the 
species established on these specimens completely conform to 
the above generalisation. So that now there are six discon- 
tinuous groups of species of Peripatus all capable of precise 
definition. They are (1) the South African group; (2) the 
Australasian group; (3) the Peripatus from New Britain ; 
(4) those from the Neotropical Region; (5) the Peripatus 
from the Congo; and (6) the four species from Malaya. To 
these must be added a seventh group formed by the Chilian 
Peripatus, P. blainvillei, which, as Bouvier has shown, is 
quite distinct from the other neotropical species, and from all 
the speciesfound in other regions. The remarkable point about 
these groups is that they are sharply marked off from one 
another, and, though there is the usual interdigitation of char- 
