BARBOUR: NOTES ON THE HERPETOLOGY OF JAMAICA. 2S3 



objects. Peripatns is one of the most delicate of known organisms. 

 Dr. Grabham, a well-known field naturalist, long resident in Kingston, 

 Jamaica, told me that with the greatest care he had never been able to 

 bring a living Peripatus from Bath to Kingston in Jamaica, a distance 

 of thirty-five or foi'ty miles, and my experience has been exactly the 

 same. Last winter it was found absolutely impossible to keep alive at 

 all any of the hundred-odd specimens which were taken in the vicinity of 

 Bath. On the return from a day's collecting many dead specimens of Peri- 

 patus were always found in the receptacle in which they were carried, which 

 was filled with the natural earth and moss taken from the spot where the 

 creatures were found. Aside from this, the fact that the creatures are 

 killed in a remarkably short space of time in alcohol, weak formalin, or 

 by an emersion in hot water far below the boiling point, tends to sub- 

 stantiate this view whatever may be true with other species of the 

 group. Now we know that Peripatus occurs not only in Jamaica, where 

 there are two species, but also on the island of Trinidad, on Dominica, 

 on St. Thomas, Antigua, and Porto Rico. The species on Trinidad bears 

 a close similarity to South American forms. The species in the Lesser 

 Antilles and in Porto Ptico are very closely related to one another. In 

 fact, Bouvier prefers to consider them sub-species of the long known 

 Peripatus dominicae. The Jamaican forms, on the other hand, he groups 

 more with the Central American species, which substantiates the evi- 

 dence presented by the distribution of the reptiles and amphibians. 

 Again Bouvier in his "Monographic des Onychophores " (Ann. Sci. Nat. 

 Zool., 1907, ser. 9, 2, p. 72, 73) gives us in succinct form his ideas re- 

 garding the distribution of recent Onychophora. From his "Peripatides 

 primitifs " he derives, first of all, two great groups, the ludo-Malayan 

 forms and his "Peripatus andicoles." These groups he shows to differ 

 fundamentally in structure and to represent an extremely early separa- 

 tion. From the latter group he derives directly "Peripatus caraibes" 

 and lastly from these all the African forms. It may be urged that the 

 connections by which Peripatus reached Antillea have been very ancient 

 indeed, and had nothing to do with rnoi'e recent ones used by modern 

 types. In view of the fact that a great part of the islands has been under 

 water in recent geologic times it is quite possible that Peripatus utilized 

 the same connections over which more specialized forms have come, so 

 that they may be of importance when rather recent migrations are cou^ 

 sidered. There seems no reason to believe that there have been several 

 successive approximations of Antillea to the adjacent mainlands. 



Calvert, in a recent paper on the " Odouate Fauna of ^[exico and Cen- 



