354 Miscellaneous. 



Neiv Observations on Peripatus. 

 By E.-L. Bouvier. 



The object of the Note which I recently published in the ' Comptes 

 Eendus de l'Academie des Sciences ' * was to show that Peripatus is 

 probably of American origin and that transitional forms exist 

 between the species belonging to the New World and those that 

 occur in the Old ; to-day my purpose is to make known a new 

 Peripatus, the peculiar interest of which is that it clearly demon- 

 strates the characteristics of the most primitive representatives of 

 the genus. 



This Peripatus belongs, like P. Tholloni, to the collection of the Paris 

 Museum ; it was obtained at Popayan, in New Granada (Colombia), 

 by a traveller whose name has escaped us. Captured in a house, it 

 had ejected a copious fluid from its posterior tentacles, and was 

 found to be partially enclosed in this secretion, which had been 

 coagulated by the alcohol in which the specimen was preserved. 



Difficult as it is to separate one from another in the case of the 

 majority of ttie American species, the present form possesses some 

 eminently characteristic features. 



In the general form of the body the animal somewhat resembles 

 Peripatus Moselei/i : it presents a great and regular expansion from 

 the extremities to the middle, at which point its diameter amounts 

 to 8*8 millim. ; its total length, excluding the tentacles, is 

 73 millim. 



The transverse wrinkles in the integument are not interrupted 

 on the dorsal median line, which is depressed, but they become 

 perceptibly attenuated there ; on the back they are adorned with 

 little conical and transversely elongated papilla}, which form several 

 irregular rows in each furrow ; here and there these rows are 

 interrupted by very large conical or subcylindrieal papillae, which 

 occupy the entire width of the furrow. These large papillae are few 

 in number and resemble warts scattered about on the integument 

 of the animal ; more abundant and slightly reduced in size in the 

 neighbourhood of the limbs, they are entirely wanting on the 

 ventral surface and on the appendages, and are replaced in these 

 regions by papilla) similar to those of Peripatus Edwardsii. 



The antennae are scarcely dilated in front and exhibit about forty- 

 seven rings. Including the large internal tooth the number of 

 teeth on each jaw is four ; on the inner jaw we find, in addition, a 

 row of five or six smaller teeth. No known species exhibits so 

 complicated a dental armature. 



The number of pairs of limbs is thirty-seven ; we know that there 

 are as many as thirty-six in Peripatus quitensis, Schmarda, and 

 more than forty in P. torquatus, Kennel. They are very much 

 flattened in the antero-posterior direction, almost laminiform, and, 

 although this appearance may be partly due to the action of the 

 alcohol, it is certain that the living animal must attract attention 



* Vide sujyrd, p. 351. 



