THE ANATOMY OF AN AUSTRALIAN LAND PLANARIAN. 53 
result was very unpleasant, and a feeling experienced something like that caused by 
putting a piece of velvet in the mouth, or sucking a lump of alum. This sensation 
may, I think, very probably be attributed to the presence of the innumerable rod-like 
bodies, which may perhaps thus render the animal inedible. The function of these 
bodies has hitherto been a perfect mystery, and I only offer the above explanation as 
a possible one.* JI tried the same experiment, and with the same result, upon 
another common Australian species of land Planarian. 
The pharynx during the life of the animal is usually completely retracted and 
hidden within the peripharyngeal chamber (vide Figs. 8 and 9), and I have no 
observations of my own to record with regard to the food or method of obtaining it. 
I must, however, quote a very interesting observation on this point, recently published 
by Mr. Charles C. Brittlebank in a letter to the Editor of the “ Victorian Naturalist”’ 
(4) :—“‘ During one of my night rambles I found one of those banded, leech-like 
worms. I think they are called Planarian worms, or terrestrial Planarie. In 
 Darwin’s ‘ Voyage of a Naturalist,’ p. 27, he mentions keeping some of these worms 
and feeding them on rotten wood. If these terrestrial Planarie are the striped leech- 
like worms we find here, I think they feed on animal food as well as vegetable. ‘The 
worm I found captured one of those zmsects known as wood-lice or slaters, It caught 
this insect by means of the mucous coating with which these worms are covered, and, 
after crawling over it a short time, it protruded an organ from the under side of the 
body, and, after some time, inserted it between the segments on the under side of the 
slater, In a short time I noticed the worm had increased in size; also that it had 
become a much darker colour, from the contents of the slater flowing into its body, 
and it was not long before the empty shell was all that remained of what had once 
been a slater or wood-louse. I found one of these worms devouring the larva of a 
ground beetle, but, as I did not see the worm kill the larva, I took no further notice, 
although the worm had the same organ buried in the larva. I mention this, as 
Darwin speaks of rotten wood as the food on which he fed those kept by him.” 
These valuable observations concerning the animal nature of the food of Australian 
land Planarians are quite in accordance with Professor Moseley’s conclusions on the 
subject. (6) 
In two of the specimens of Geoplana spenceri of which I cut sections I found, 
embedded in the tissue beneath the alimentary canal, numerous small Nematode 
worms living as parasites. It is interesting to find a Nematode parasitic upon a 
land Planarian, and I am not aware that such a case has hitherto been recorded. 
Hallez, however (5) records the frequent occurrence of a small parasitic Nematode 
* The rod-like bodies may possibly also serve to increase the stickiness of the mucous and thus enable the worm to 
hold its prey more securely. 
+ Vide, however, my subsequent paper ‘‘ Zoological notes on a trip to Walhalla” (‘‘ Victorian Naturalist,” Vol. vi., 
No. 8, December 1889). 
