ANNALS 
MEDEDELINGEN 
OF THE VAN HET 
J'ransoaal JYtuseuttt. 
VOL. III. 
APRIL, 1911. 
NO. 1. 
BDELLOID ROTIFERA OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
By James Murray, F.R.S.E. 
(With Plates I to III.) 
The material for this paper was placed at my disposal through the kindness 
of the Director and Curators of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, Dr. 
Gunning and Messrs. J. Hewitt and T. Jenkins. Dry mosses from various 
parts of South Africa were sent to me from time to time during the year 
1910. These I moistened and examined for Rotifera and other organisms. 
Some of the mosses were very productive, notably one sample from Pretoria ; 
others yielded almost nothing. 
The Bdelloida mentioned in this paper were obtained from four 
localities — Pretoria ; Woodbush, in the North Transvaal ; Pondoland, 
in the east, and Knysna, in the south of Cape Colony. 
Previous knowledge oj South African Bdelloida . — Very little has been 
written about the Bdelloida of South Africa. Ehrenberg in 1854 recorded 
two species for Cape Colony — C. rediviva and C. hexaodon (12)*. Thorpe 
in 1893 recorded P. citrina for the Cape of Good Hope (36). Kirkman 
in 1901 gave a list of seven species, but he was not confident about four 
of them (16). Rousselet in 1906 (31) summed up all that was known about 
South African Bdelloids, and included a list compiled by Mr. W. Milne, 
of Uitenhage, Cape Colony. His list numbers thirteen Bdelloids. but 
he omits the two species mentioned by Ehrenberg. 
Mr. Milne has been working for some years at the Bdelloida of South 
Africa, but he has not to my knowledge published anything about them, 
except the list included in Mr. Rousselet’s paper. He has found many 
species, and among them some very aberrant forms. He has been good 
enough to send me some moss, and among it I have found several of his 
peculiar species. We await the publication of his results expectantly 
* The figures in heavy type, enclosed in brackets* refer to the Bibliography at the end. 
