IN THE WAKE OF THE “ CHALLENGER.’ 
25 
There is, unfortunately, only space for the barest resume of the 
new facts in zoology and physics established during’ the voyage. 
With regard to land-crabs, it had been previously asserted by 
Bell, contrary to the supposition of Vaughan Thompson, that 
the young of these crustaceans, like those of Astacus jiuvia - 
tilis, have the same form as their parents on first coming into 
the world. Now Dr. Suhm, on examining a string of “ berry- 
like pedunculated eggs ” of a land-crab belonging to the genus 
Cardisoma (species doubtful), caught in the bay of Porto Praya 
(Island of San Jago), found some containing young ones 
which “ were not like their mother, but Zoeas.” The Zoea of 
Ccirdisoma leaves the eggs in a somewhat more advanced state 
than that of Carcinus moenas , representing a middle stage be- 
tween the larva of the latter which has just left the egg and the 
one after its first moult (see figs, by Spence Bate in 4 ‘Phil. Trans.” 
1858, PI. xl.). It is probable that the Zoeas leave the mother, 
and lead a pelaegic life until they have undergone all their me- 
tamorphoses.* At the Cape of Good Hope Mr. Moseley suc- 
ceeded in obtaining thirty specimens of Peripatus capensis , 
an animal whose exact position in the zoological scale has been 
hitherto somewhat doubtful. The most recent information con- 
cerning it has been given by Grube in the zoological series of 
the Novara expedition. Nearly all the specimens were found 
at Wynberg, between Simon’s Bay and Cape Town. Peripatus 
seems to be very local in distribution, affecting damp places, 
feeding on rotten willow-wood, aud being nocturnal in habit. 
When irritated it shoots out with great suddenness, from papillge 
about the mouth, a “viscid tenacious fluid, which forms a 
meshwork of fine threads.” This is not irritant, but as sticky 
as bird-lime, so that flies are held fast by it. Professor Gegenbaur 
holds that the position of this animal among the worms is not 
certain, but that, at any rate, it connects ringed worms with 
Arthropods and flat worms. With this Mr. Moseley agrees ; 
adding, however, that it is probably an intermediate form link- 
ing the ringed and flat worms together with the “ tracheata,” and 
may well be placed among Professor Haeckel’s “Protracheata.”f 
Mr. Gulliver, when ' with the Transit of Venus Expedition in 
1874, looked carefully for Peripatus on Rodriguez Island, but 
did not find any specimen. On June 15, 1875, halfway 
between Vries Island, Oosima, and Cape Sagami, there was 
found adhering to the trawl a specimen of a new family of 
Nemertines, for which Mr. Moseley proposes the name Pelago- 
nemertes Rollestoni. In the flattened form of its bod}^, and in 
* “Trans. Linn. Soc.” 2nd series. Zoology, p. 46, and PI. XI. fig. 1. 
t “Proc. Royal Soc.” vol. xxiii. p. 344, and “Phil. Trans.” vol. 164, 
p. 757, 1874. 
