114 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION D. 
Zealand Land Planarians under the names Geoplana Moseley i and 
Rhynchodemus testaceus , of which the latter has since proved to be 
identical with Moseley’s Australian Cmnoplana sanguined . 
Seven years later, again, the subject was taken up by Messrs. 
Fletcher and Hamilton , # who, in addition to giving an interesting 
account of the habits of these animals, described fourteen new 
Australian species, t including the first genuine species of the genus 
RJiynchodcmus found in Australasia, They also showed that Moseley’s 
genus Camoplana was founded erroneously, and that the species 
described under that name must come under the old genus Geoplana. 
In 1888 I began to work at the group in Victoria, at the instance 
of Professor Spencer, who placed in my hands for investigation a 
very fine species collected by himself on the Upper Yarra. This 
species ( G coplan a Spencer i) I dealt with as exhaustively as 1 could from 
an anatomical and histological point of view, and the results obtained 
were published in my memoir “ On the Anatomy of an Australian 
Land Planarian.”J 
Since then work on the group in Australasia has been confined 
almost exclusively to the description of new species. § 
Since 1888 our knowledge of the group from a systematic point 
of view has increased steadily, numerous new species having been 
described from various parts of Australasia. The Australian species 
have been described for the most part in the Proceedings and Transac- 
tions of the Royal Society of Victoria, and I have also communicated 
a few notes on the subject to this Association, and to the Linnean 
Society of New South Wales. A most interesting collection from 
Lord Howe Island, including the remarkable new genus Cotyloplana , 
was described by Professor Spencer in the Transactions of the Royal 
Society of Victoria for 1801 ; while during the past year I have com- 
municated papers to the New Zealand Institute and to the Annals and 
Magazine of Natural History, in which a considerable number of New 
Zealand Land Planarians are described. 
Altogether we now know somewhere about 60 species of Austral- 
asian Land Planarians, but it is impossible to give the exact number 
until questions of synonymy are more definitely settled. That very 
many more species remain to be described cannot be doubted, for it is 
only in comparatively few localities that the group has been systemati- 
cally investigated. Thus from Western Australia not a single species 
has yet been described; from South Australia we know only two ; 
from Queensland, only six; from Lord Ilowe Island, eight ; from Tas- 
mania, nine; from New South Wales, eighteen; from New Zealand, 
twenty; and from Victoria, twenty-seven. || These numbers are in 
proportion to the amount of work which has been done in the different 
localities, and we may evidently still hope for a large increase in our 
knowledge of the group. 
* Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. [Ser. 2], vo! if., p. 349 (1887). 
f Several of these species appear to me to be synonymous. 
+ Trans. Koyal Soc. Victoria, vol. i., part 2, p. 50. 
§ Additional anatomical information will be found, however, in my paper 
“On the presence of Ciliated Pits in Australian Land Planarians” — Proc. K. S. 
Victoria, N.S., vol. iv., p. 39. 
|| These numbers include species like Bipalium kewense , which have doubtless been 
introduced, and also well-marked varieties. 
