NEOTEOPIOAL SPECIES. 185 



(No. 8) belong to this species cannot be definitely settled until 

 more specimens come to hand. 



In P. Edwardsii the females are larger than the males 

 and have a greater number of legs. This fact was first noticed 

 by GaflProu. He found that the males possessed either twenty- 

 nine or thirty pairs of legs, while of his females one had 

 thirty-four, four had thirty-two, and four thirty-one. In my 

 specimens, which came, I believe, from the same place as the 

 specimens which Gaffron used for his^ second paper (No. 35), 

 all the males had thirty or twenty-nine pairs of legs (four 

 with thirty and three with twenty-nine), while of the females 

 three had thirty-one, four had thirty-two, and one thirty- 

 three (fig. 6). Ernst states that the full-grown animal has 

 thirty-one pairs of legs, the new-born young but twenty- 

 nine ; and he deduces from this that the young are born 

 with an incomplete complement of legs, and that new legs 

 make their appearance in the subsequent growth of the 

 animal. This, if true, would be important, as in no species of 

 Peripatus that I know of are the young born imperfect in 

 this respect. I therefore examined the number of legs of the 

 oldest embryos in my specimens with great care, and the result 

 of my observations is in entire contradiction to Ernst's state- 

 ments. The embryos I found differ in the number of legs, 

 just as do the adults, the greatest number being thirty-two 

 pairs and the smallest twenty-nine. If this is so there can be no 

 doubt that the new-born, young differ in the same manner. To 

 take an instance : from the lower end of the uteruses of the four 

 specimens with thirty-two pairs of legs I obtained in all seven 

 embryos, which were practically fully- developed and ready for 

 birth. Of these, four had twenty-nine pairs, two had thirty-one, 

 and one had thirty-two — an embryo with twenty-nine and one 

 with thirty pairs were found in the same mother ; and I have 

 also found instances of a quite immature embryo (but possessed 

 of the full number of legs) with a greater number of legs than 

 the large mature embryo which occupied the part of the uterus 



' The specimen which Gaffron used for his first paper was from Trinidad, 

 and had thirty -two pairs of legs. 



