110 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION D. 
with the last ; and a fourteen-legged species known as P. insignis ? 
which seems to reach its maximum development in Tasmania. 
In JSew Zealand Peripfthts novee- Zealand ice , with fifteen pairs of 
legs, appears to be fairly common in certain localities both in the 
North and South Islands ; and I have recently described, as a variety 
of this species, a form with sixteen pairs of legs from a locality (in the 
North Island) whence the genus had not hitherto been recorded. This 
form was represented by three specimens given to me by Mr. Henry 
Suter, after whom I have named it as a new variety. The only 
feature which, so far as 1 have been able to ascertain by careful 
examination and dissection, separates this variety from the ordinary 
New Zealand form, is the development of an additional pair of legs, 
a fact of considerable interest in view of the usual ^constancy in the 
number of legs of the Australasian species. Hence it appears that, 
while fifteen is the usual number of pairs of legs in the Australasian 
species, we have in Tasmania and Victoria a form with only fourteen 
pairs, and in New Zealand a form with sixteen pairs. 
ARACHNIDA. 
Spiders and other closely related traeheate Arachnida form a 
very prominent feature in the crypto zoic fauna of Australasia, beiug 
both numerous and varied. The literature of the group is, unfortu- 
nately, almost entirely unknown to me, and I have no observations 
of my own which are worth placing on record. The abundance of 
spiders in cryptozoic haunts may perhaps be partly accounted for by 
the abundant supply of suitable animal food fouud in such localities. 
In Australia the true scorpions are also common, and it appears 
to me a very strange fact in distribution that they should be, so far as 
we know at present, entirely absent from New Zealand. One would 
imagine that their facilities for dispersal would be quite as great as 
in the case of other cryptozoic Arthropods, such, for example, as 
Peripaius , which occur abundantly in New Zealand. Indeed, one 
would expect a close similarity between the distribution of scorpions 
and that of Peripaius , for both belong to very archaic types, and the 
habitat; of both is apparently identical. In. Australia, according to 
Pocock, who has lately published an article on the Geographical 
Distribution of t he group in Natural Science,*' no less than six genera 
of scorpions are represented. f 
The Pseudoscorpions, such as Chelifer , do not appear to be 
common in Australia, for I have only once seen a specimen, which 
came out of some firewood in Melbourne. In the South Island of 
New Zealand, however, I have found a large species, probably of 
Chelifer , very abundantly under stones near the banks of a creek in 
the Alford Forest; and it was interesting to note that, like the 
centipedes, they carried their eggs about attached to the under 
surface cf the body in a spherical mass. 
CRUSTACEA. 
Small terrestrial Amphipoda and Isopoda are very frequently met 
with under logs and stoius aud dead leaves. Of the former group 
the shrimp-like Talitrus sylvaticus (Haswell), of Australia, and 
* May, 1894. 
f Viz. : Honnurus , Urodacus, Ccrcophonhis, Isomctrus, A rchisom ctrus, Isometroides. 
