ON A COLLECTION OF EARTHWORMS FROM NEW BRITAIN, 

 THE SOLOMON ISLANDS, THE NEW HEBRIDES, AND THE 

 LOYALTY ISLANDS. 



By FRANK E. BEDDARD, M.A. (Oxox.), F.R.S. 

 Prosector and Assistant Secretary of the Zoological Society. 



With Plate XXI. 



The following pages relate to the Collection of Earthworms formed by Dr Willey 

 among the islands mentioned in the title. A very considerable number of these 

 worms were in an excellent state of preservation ; others on the contrary were 

 softened. In the case of the latter I have not thought it advisable in every case to 

 publish a description. I have taken this course on account of the fact that I could 

 not be quite certain as to their identity or non-identity with other species. It 

 appears to me that little is gained by publishing an account of a species which 

 cannot, from the nature of the case, be sufficiently full to permit of a confident 

 statement as to its specific characters, unless indeed new details of anatomical im- 

 portance should turn up during the examination. This applies also to immature 

 examples, of which Dr Willey's collection contained a good number. Such incomplete 

 descriptions would only serve to exercise the ingenuity of workers coming after me, 

 who might consider it to be their duty to identify species with those briefly described 

 by myself; no advantage to science would be gained by taking this step. I shall 

 therefore deal in this memoir only with those species which I can, I believe, fully 

 identify as new forms or as species already known. 



The area where Dr Willey collected the species to be described here is a large 

 one, and has not been much investigated from the point of view of its earthworm 

 inhabitants. It may be convenient before adding my own contributions to the know- 

 ledge of the Earthworms of the Polynesian region (of Lydekker) and of the islands 

 adjacent to New Guinea, to refer briefly to what has already been done. 



I shall consider only New Guinea and the islands which lie to the west of 

 Long. 150, below the equator and to the north of New Zealand. 



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