TASMANIAN EARTHWORM. 383 
NOTE ON A NEGLECTED TASMANIAN 
EARTHWORM. 
By Professor Brennam, D.Sc. 
In a work published in 1861, entitled ‘‘ Neue Wirbellose 
Thiere,” Schmarda gives pictures and brief diagrams of 
a great number of worms belonging to various classes, and 
collected in various parts of the world. Amongst these is 
an earthworm which he called Hypogawon orthostichon, 
whose habitat he gives as ‘‘ New Zealand, Mt. Wellington.” 
This worm—all too imperfectly described by Schmarda— 
was re-examined by Mr. Beddard in 1892 (Ann. Mag. Nat. 
Hist.), who was permitted to open one of the specimens col- 
lected by Schmarda, then preserved in the Vienna Museum. 
As a result of his investigations, he was able to show that 
this worm does not belong to the genus Hypogeon at all, 
but is a member of a genus which till recently was termed 
Megascolides; and in Beddard’s monograph (1895) it ap- 
pears as Megascolides orthostichon, (Schmarda). 
Still more recently Michaelsen (in 1900) has limited the 
genus Megascolides to worms of the type of M@. australis, and 
retains Fletcher’s genus WVotoscolex for the majority of the 
species attributed by Spencer and Beddard to Megascolides. 
Schmarda’s worm, then, is Wotoscolex orthostichon. 
Now, Notoscolex and Megascolides are characteristically 
Australian worms, and in recent collections no species has 
been found in New Zealand; so that Beddard and Michael- 
sen, while attributing V. orthostichon to New Zealand, have 
noted this exceptional distribution. But this apparent ex- 
ception is due to a geographical error committed by 
Schmarda, who no doubt collected the worm, as he says he 
did, on “ Mount Weilington,” but attributed that mountain 
to New Zealand, confusing it with Wellington, the town. 
Captain Hutton, as long ago as 1879, in a footnote to his 
“Catalogue of New Zealand Worms” (Trans. N.Z. Instit. 
x1., p. 317), pointed out that Mount Wellington was in Tas- 
mania, and that this worm should be included in the fauna 
of that island, and not in that of New Zealand; yet, this 
rectification has been entirely overlooked; and Spencer, 
when dealing with the Tasmanian earthworms, did not seem 
to be aware of the fact; while Michaelsen, in the most 
recent memoir on the class, still gives ‘‘New Zealand” as 
the habitat of this species. Now, in New Zealand the sub- 
family to which Wotoscolex belongs is unrepresented, 
except for two species of Diporocheta, and it is extremely 
improbable that the only earthworm collected by Schmarda 
in New Zealand should have belonged to this sub-family. 
