40 



NOTES ON A. NEW SPECIES OP PEDALION 

 POUND IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 



By V. G. Thoepe, F.B.M.S., H.M.S. Penguin. 



(Corresponding Member.) 



(Bead April 9, 1894.; 

 The paper I have the honour to read before this Society 

 mio-ht be entitled, with some truth, " The History of a Lost 

 Opportunity." In a paper which I read before the Eoyal 

 Microscopical Society of London, in 1889, on a "New Species 

 of Megalotrocha," I spoke of Dunk Island, off the coast of 

 Queensland, as follows :— " One meets with a tiny pool, not 

 more than three or four feet, across, on the bleak and rocky 

 headland of an island out at sea, exposed to the storm and to 

 the glare of a tropical sun, breakers beating on the rocks 

 below within twenty feet of it, and yet, strange to relate, I 

 found the water of such a solitary and lifeless pool literally 

 swarming with a wonderful pedalion." But at that time 

 (1888) I did not realise that this rotifer was a totally distinct 

 and new species. Last August (1893) whilst examining 

 some water collected in the artificially hollowed-ont trunk 

 of a cocoanut tree, made by the natives of New Georgia for 

 drinking purposes, and growing on a small island in Eendoya 

 Harbour, Solomon Islands, I once again came across this 

 pedalion in considerable numbers. Then I recognised my 

 old friend of the Australian coast, and realised that it was 

 a new species, differing in essential details from the only 

 known species of Pedalion, P. mirum. Before I could, 

 however, complete mv examination of this rotifer, the news 

 arrived that this same species had been discovered by Dr. 

 Levander, of Helsingfors, in Finland, in October, 1892,* and 

 had been named by him P. fennicum four years after I first 

 had seen it. 



The genus " Pedalion " can with truth be regarded as one 

 the great discoveries of the nineteenth century. As late as 

 the year 1871, the true position of the Eotifera in the animal 

 kingdom was a matter of keen dispute. At first classed with 

 the Infusoria, they were afterwards raised by some observers 

 to the level of the Crustacea, whilst others placed them 

 among the Vermes (worms). In that year Dr. C. T. Hudson 

 discovered in Clifton, England, a rotifer, for which not only 

 a new genus had to be formed, but also a new family, whilst 



♦Curiously enough like mine " in a little pool, about two yards square by a fVot 

 deep ten yards from the sea-shore, and not a yard above the sea-level ; no vegeta- 

 tion ' grey detritus on the bottom ; the water moderately clear ; sweet." 



