616 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VoL. XXXIII. 
This species lives in sand along the shore of Matsushima Bay, 
‘and so has the same sort of habitat as have several other species 
of the same genus, which are found along the seashores of other 
countries. 
P. matsushimensis agrees with the other Pontodrilus species known 
to lizuka in most characters of generic value, as the genus is defined 
by Beddard in his monograph; the chief difference being in the 
position at which the sperm duct actually opens into the spermiducal 
gland. According to Beddard, the position of this opening is at the 
“junction of glandular and muscular parts ” of the spermiducal gland, 
while in the Japanese species the sperm duct enters the wall of the 
glandular part near its junction with the muscular portion, and then 
traverses the wall to the other end of the glandular portion before 
actually communicating with its lumen. As this relation of the 
sperm duct to the spermiducal gland is apparent only from a study 
of serial sections, and as lizuka assumed that no other species of 
Pontodrilus had been studied in this way, he concluded it probable 
that similar relations would be found to exist in the other species. 
The writer seems not to have been aware of the extended and care- 
ful work of Eisen’ on /ontodrilus michelseni, published in 1895. 
Eisen’s account of this species is accompanied by numerous figures 
made from cross-sections, and shows that the superficial entrance of 
the sperm duct into the spermiducal gland ‘has nearly the same posi- 
tion as in the case of P. matsushimensis, but furnishes no evidence 
that the internal communication is the same. On the contrary, it 
would indicate that the communication of the lumen of the sperm 
duct with that of the gland is near the point of the superficial 
entrance of the duct into the gland. This condition of things in 
P. michelseni, while it may render doubtful the correctness of Tizuka’s 
assumption that other species of Pontodrilus will be found to have 
the same relation of sperm duct and spermiducal gland as exists in 
P. matsushimensis, helps to bridge over the differences between that 
species and the others, and so lessens the necessity for establishing 
a new genus to receive it. 
“New or Imperfectly Known Species of Earthworms ” is the title 
of a paper in which the authors give us the first of a series of articles 
which they propose to contribute on the Oligochzta of Japan.’ 
In a third paper are described sixteen new species of Perichæta, and 
1 Pacific Coast Oligocheta, I, Mem. Cal. Acad. Sci., vol. ii 
i, No 
2 Goto, S., and Hatai, S. New or Imperfectly Known Spacie of ‘Earthworms, 
No. 1, Annotationes Zool. Japonenses, vol. ii, Pt. iii, pp. 65-78. 
