132 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



small round hole, just as we can put our tongue out of our mouth 

 when we wish to. There is a difference, however, between our 

 tongue and the tongue — if I may so call it — of a Planarian Worm, 

 for while our tongue lies in the middle of our mouth, the mouth 

 of a Planarian lies in the middle of its tongue ; that is to say, the 

 sucker is tubular and the cavity of the tube leads into the 

 alimentary canal. This aperture in the middle of the sucker 

 forms the only means of communication between the alimentary 

 canal of the worm and the external world, so that all undigested 

 food has to be passed out again through the same opening by 

 which it was taken in. 



One of our members, Mr. Brittlebank, has already described in 

 the Naturalist the curious manner in which the Land Planarians 

 feed. He observed one with the sucker inserted into the body of 

 a wood-louse, from which it was contentedly sucking out all the 

 nice juicy inside. I disturbed one at Walhalla which had evi- 

 dently just been engaged in treating an unfortunate beetle in the 

 same manner. The body of the worm was wrapped around the 

 beetle, which was held fast by the intensely sticky slime. 



Four or five different species of Land Planarians were found at 

 Walhalla. By far the largest and handsomest, and at the same 

 time the commonest, was Geoplana spencei'i^ a species whose 

 anatomy I have already described in detail at the Royal Society, 

 and which I have named after our vice-president. Professor 

 Baldwin Spencer, who first discovered it at M'Mahon's Creek on 

 the Upper Yarra. This handsome worm is of a very dark olive 

 green or almost black colour on the upper surface and bright 

 cobalt or Prussian blue on the lower, with a small pinkish tip at 

 the front end. Some of the specimen? found at Walhalla must 

 have measured fully six inches in length when crawling. They 

 were much larger than any Planarians I had seen before. 



Another species was almost entirely of a sulphur-yellow colour ; 

 another (if indeed it be distinct), yellow with four dark-brownish 

 stripes down the back ; a fourth was dark olive green above and 

 speckledy brown below, while a fifth was very pale brownish 

 yellow, with two red stripes down its back. 



One day while hunting about on the hillside just above one of 

 the tramways I came across a small slug-like animal lying quite 

 still under a stone, with a quantity of slime around it. It was of 

 a brownish orange colour, and looked as though it might possibly 

 be some new kind of Planarian. Anyway, it looked as if it could 

 not do anybody any harm, so I put it on the back of my hand, as 

 I often do, to watch it crawl about. Suddenlj^, to my utmost 

 consternation, the little beast, with lightning-like rapidity, shot out 

 a great long slimy white thing from its front end larger than itself, 

 and at the same time its body became much slenderer. The long 

 white thing, which we may call the proboscis, lay upon my hand 



