THE ANNALS 



A N I) 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[EIGHTH SERIES.] 

 No. 9G. DECEMBER 1915. 



LV. — A new African Earthworm, collected by Dr. C. Christy 

 for the Congo Museum ; with a Note on its Spermathecce 

 and Spermatophores. J3y H. A. Baylis, B.A. 



(Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



A small collection of earthworms made in the Belgian Congo 

 by Dr. Cuthbert Christy, for the Congo Museum at Tervueren, 

 has been sent to the British Museum for examination and 

 report. I am indebted to the Belgian Colonial Administra- 

 tion for permission to describe any new species. 



The earthworms, to the number of fifteen specimens, one 

 of which is immature, prove all to be referable to the same 

 species. It belongs to the very large and widespread genus 

 Dichogaster, Beddard, of which already upwards of one 

 hundred species have been described from the African con- 

 tinent alone, besides others in Central America, the West 

 Indies, Southern Asia, and elsewhere. The genus is a very 

 well-marked one, but the specific characters, as is natural 

 when the number of closely related species is so large, are 

 very minute. I have not, however, been able to identify 

 the species with any of the previously described African 

 forms ; and, as the localities where it was collected are in a 

 comparatively unexplored region, the presumption that this 

 is a new form is not so rash as it might at first sight seem 

 to be. 



The worm is said by Dr. Christy to be very common and 

 widely distributed in the region explored by him, i. e. } the 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 8. Vol. xvi. 32 



