241 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



On Othelosoma, a New Genus of African Slugs. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray. 



Mr. Symonds, jun., when lie returned from the Gaboon, left with 

 me a couple of specimens of what he called a terrestrial slug, which 

 he had obtained, on the 24th of December 1865, in the Gaboon. 

 He promised to send to me, at my solicitation, a detailed account of 

 it and of some other Mollusca which he had drawn from life, and 

 for that purpose took with him the drawings and other specimens. 

 The descriptions have not arrived, and I am now told that he has 

 left the country again. As the animal is very unlike any other that 

 I have seen, I have determined to give as distinct an account as I can 

 of it, without injuring the specimen, in the hope that other travellers 

 will obtain more examples of it, so that its anatomy may be studied 

 and its proper place in the system determined. It is much more 

 like the terrestrial leech of Ceylon called Dunlopia* ; but it has no 

 appearance of a lunate head, such as characterizes that genus ; 

 and Mr. Symonds, who had seen it alive, said that it had the habit 

 and appearance, when alive, of a slug, and he considered it more 

 allied to the slug than to any other animal ; among the genera that 

 he had collected, there were some slugs. Unfortunately he took the 

 drawings away with him, so that I have them not to refer to. 



One specimen is rather more than an inch, and the other about 

 | inch long. They are fusiform subcylindrical, rather depressed, 

 tapering at each end. In one specimen it is the head, and in 

 the other it is the other end that is rather the longest and more 

 tapering. There is a flat, narrow, linear foot in the middle of the 

 underside, extending the entire length of the body, with a very 

 slight linear central longitudinal impression. There are indications 

 of some very obscure cross folds on the sides of the body, but not 

 forming any distinct rings. The upper surface is reddish brown, 

 with three rather broad, black, longitudinal lines — one down the 

 centre, and the others on the sides of the back. The underside of 

 the body is pale, and the foot white ; the foot is only indistinctly 

 defined, except by its whiter colour, as the lateral edge is scarcely 

 raised from the under surface of the body. The head is very small, 

 hemispherical, white, semitransparent, with a small black dot-like 

 eye in the middle of each of its two sides ; the head is separated 

 from the front of the foot by a ring almost as wide as the head is 

 long, of the same colour as the rest of the body, but brown beneath. 

 The hinder end of the body is rather depressed and gradually con- 

 tracted to the tip. 



Mr. Symonds's figure of the animal when alive, represented it as 

 having a small dot-like aperture in the side, which he said was the 

 aperture for respiration ; but I have not been able to observe any 

 indication of an aperture in the animals in their contracted state in 

 spirit, and I do not like to cut into the specimens until more have 

 been obtained ; and they are not now in a very good state. 



* The animal called Dunlopia was first described under the name of 

 Planaria? lunata, Gray, Zool. Misc. v. (1831). 



