68 ON THE VICTORIAN LAND PLANARIANS, 



of the common mussel described by McAlpine.* Cilia are probably present on the 

 dorsal surface also, but very small and much obscured by slime. In crawling the 

 horseshoe-shaped anterior extremity of the body, on which the eyes are mostly 

 situate and which has usually more or less of a reddish tinge, is uplifted to gain a 

 more extended view, and the path of the animal is marked, like that of a snail, by a 

 slimy track. 



They live upon the juices of insects and other small animals, which they extract 

 by suction, the sucker-like pharynx being inserted in some soft part of the victim 

 and the latter held fast by the intensely sticky slime secreted around it by its 

 captor. Mr. C. Frost informs me that on one occasion when out collecting he placed 

 a living land Planarian in a box with a live Cicada and that when he opened the box 

 again to show the Cicada to a friend he found the insect quite flat and empty, all the 

 inside having been sucked out by the Planarian. Hence the land Planarians arre 

 certainly carnivorous and they must be able to find an abundant supply of food 

 amongst the innumerable cockroaches, beetles and other small animals which make 

 up so large a proportion of the cryptozoic fauna. 



Land Planarians are found breeding in the autumn and winter months and I 

 have been able to observe the method of copulation in Geoplana medwlineata, at 

 Upper Macedon on April 7th of the present year. The two individuals were 

 precisely similar in colour and markings and of about the same size. 



They were lying beneath a log in such a manner that the posterior portions of 

 their ventral surfaces were applied together, the tail of the one pointing in the 

 opposite direction to that of the other. The genital atrium in each case was 

 expanded to form a sucker and the two suckers being applied together held the 

 worms in position. The orifices of both male and female copulatory organs were in 

 each case somewhat protruded and it follows from the position of the animals that 

 the male opening of the one must come into close contact with the female opening of 

 the other and vice versa. The most important factor in bringing this about is the 

 use of the common genital atrium as a sucker, in the hollow of which lie the male 

 and female openings. Thus the method of action of the copulatory organs, 

 whose minute anatomy I have described in the case of Geoplana spenceri, is 

 made clear. 



The eggs are laid in cocoons, several in each. I was fortunate enough to obtain 

 recently a specimen of Geoplana hoggii with a cocoon in the uterus, which proves 

 clearly that the cocoon is an internal structure and not, as in the case of the earth- 

 worm, an external structure formed by the skin. In the case observed the body of 



* Transactions and Proceedings of the Boyal Society of Victoria, Vol. XXIV., Part 2, p. 139. 



