134 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



PERIPATUS IN VICTORIA. 



To the Editor of the Victorian Naturalist. 

 Dear Sir, — It may interest some of the readers of your journal 

 to know that last week, while collecting in a fern-tree gully at 

 Warburton, on the Upper Yarra, Victoria, I had the good fortune 

 to discover two specimens of Fe7'ipatus, belonging, as I think, to a 

 new and very beautiful species. 



I hope to publish a full description, with figures, of the species 

 as soon as possible, but I am now preparing for a visit to Tasmania,- 

 and some time must necessarily elapse before I can complete the 

 work. I should, therefore, be greatly obliged if you could find 

 space for this letter in the Victorian Naturalist. 



In his "Monograph on the Species and Distribution of the 

 Genus Peripatus," recently published in the Quarterly Journal of 

 Microscopical Science., Professor Sedgwick makes no mention of 

 the occurrence of the genus in Victoria, though he describes in 

 detail the Queensland and New Zealand species. In a note in 

 the " Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales " 

 (vol. II., part I., 1887), however, Mr. Fletcher has recorded the 

 discovery of the genus in Victoria. He says : — ■" The specimen 

 which I exhibit this evening was given to me a fortnight ago by 

 my friend Mr. R. T. Baker, of Newington College, who- had 

 obtained it a few days previously either in or under a rotten log 

 at Warragul, Gippsland, Victoria. It has fifteen pairs of claw- 

 bearing appendages, and has nearly the same dimensions as are 

 given in the abstract referred to. It is, therefore, in all probability 

 an example of P. Leuckariii Sanger.^' 



From Mr. Fletcher's account, I am not able to say definitely 

 whether the specimens obtained by me belong to the same species 

 as the single specimen which he mentions ; but after carefully 

 studying Professor Sedgwick's full description of P. Leuckartii, I 

 am fairly certain that they do not belong to that species, but to a 

 new one, which I for the present refrain from naming. 



Both of my specimens were captured under fallen logs, where 

 they were lying quite still. The first appeared to be dead soon 

 after it was caught, and was therefore placed at once in alcohol. 

 The second was found under a damp, rotten log, probably of 

 Eucalyptus, in the same gully. It was taken home alive and put 

 to crawl about on a newspaper, when it appeared very active. It 

 elongated considerably when crawling, so that the legs came to be 

 much further apart than when the animal was at rest, and when 

 crawling it measured about 39 millimetres in length, excluding the 

 antennae. When irritated at the head end it ejected a surprisingly 

 large quantity of an intensely sticky fluid of a whitish coloui" from 

 the oral papillae. 



