228 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
grating of the confined upper jaw against them. How the animal 
manages to feed itself, under these conditions, is a mystery. 
Prof. Owen, describing the first specimen which was procured of 
this whale, considered that the tusks had acquired an abnormal 
direction and state of growth in that particular specimen, and 
Prof. Flower, although aware of a second specimen, felt doubtful 
whether such.a remarkable condition could be considered normal. 
Now that more specimens have been procured, however, there 
seems no longer any reason for doubt on the subject. 
It was at the Cape of Good Hope, also, that Mr. Moseley was 
enabled to collect, examine, and dissect specimens of Peripatus 
capensis, a very curious creature, believed to be a nearly related 
representative of the ancestor of all air-breathing Arthropoda— 
a. e., of all insects, spiders, and Myriapods. 
“Tt has the appearance of a black caterpillar, the largest specimens 
being more than three inches in length, but the majority smaller. <A pair 
of simple horn-like antenne project from the head, which is provided with 
a single pair of small simple eyes. Beneath the head is the mouth 
provided with tumid lips, and within with a double pair of horny jaws. 
The animal has seventeen pairs of short conical feet, provided each with a 
pair of hooked claws. The skin is soft and flexible, and not provided with 
any chitinous rings. The animal breathes air by means of tracheal tubes, 
like those of insects. These, instead of opening to the exterior by a small 
number of apertures (stigmata) arranged at the sides of the body in a regular 
manner as in all other animals provided with trachee, are much less highly 
specialised. The openings of the short trachee are scattered irregularly 
over the whole surface of the animal’s skin. It appears probable that we 
have existing in Peripatus almost the earliest stage in the evolution of 
trachee, and that these air-tubes were developed in the first tracheate 
animal out of skin-glands scattered all over the body. In higher tracheate 
animals the tracheal openings. have become restricted to certain definite 
positions by the action of natural selection. The sexes are distinct in 
Peripatus. 'The males are much smaller and fewer in numbers than the 
females: the females are viviparous, and the process of development of the 
young shows that the horny jaws of the animal are the slightly modified 
claws of a pair of limbs turned inward over the mouth as development 
proceeds ; in fact, ‘ foot-jaws,’ as in other Arthropods.” 
Before Mr. Moseley studied Peripatus at the Cape, nothing 
wes known of its mode of development, nor of the fact that it 
breathed air by means of trachee. It was generally placed with 
the Annelids, though its alliance with the Myriapods had been 
