DESCRIPTIONS OF TWO NEW EEECHES FROM PORTO RICO. 
By J. PERCY MOORE, 
Instructor in Zoology , University of Pennsylvania. 
The material under consideration was collected by the expedition sent with the 
steamer Fish Hawk to Porto Rico in the winter of 1898-99, under the auspices of 
the United States Fish Commission. 
The leech fauna of the West India Islands is very imperfectly known and no 
fresh- water forms have hitherto been described from the island of Porto Rico. Con- 
sequently the two species composing 1 this collection both prove to be novelties. One 
certainly has and probably both have a much wider distribution. 
HIRUDIN ARIA Whitman (= PCECILOBDELLA Blanchard (’93) subgenus). 
Hirudinaria was established by Whitman (’86, p. 373) for the Hirudo javanica of Wahlberg, the 
generic characters assigned being the large size of the posterior sucker, together with the long interval 
(7a- rings) separating the male and female genital orifices. The great increase in our knowledge of the 
species of leeches, which we owe so largely to the labors of Blanchard during the last ten years, has 
rendered such characters, when taken alone, unavailable for generic' distinctions. Accordingly Blanchard 
( ’97 ) has discarded Hirudinaria and has referred the type species to his subgenus Pcecilobdella of the genus 
Linmatis. Pcecilobdella appears to stand for a very natural assemblage of forms typified by Hirudo 
granulosa , Sav. and especially characterized by the very striking and constant color pattern, which is 
similar in all of the species included by its author. The described species have hitherto been known 
only from the tropical and subtropical East Indian islands and Indo-China. Blanchard has indeed 
mentioned, but without characterizing, a species from the island of Martinique. 1 
The leech described below under the name of Hirudinaria blanchardi maybe the Martinique species. 
It has the typical color pattern of Pcecilobdella and resembles Hirudinaria javanica. very closely in 
almost all important features of external organization, but the sex pores are separated by but five rings. 
I have dissected H. blanchardi and find, among other peculiarities of the reproductive organs (pi. 12, 
fig. 7), that the vagina and the common oviduct open separately into the female bursa (pi. 12, fig. 9). 
Professor Whitman has very generously placed at my disposal for dissection one of his specimens of 
II. javanica, in which the female organs, though less mature, present the same peculiarity. 
The female organs of Limnatis nilotica (the type species) have been figured by Moquin-Tandon (’46) 
and Leuckart (’94). In this species the common oviduct opens into the vagina, the mouth of which, 
therefore, becomes the only internal opening into the bursa, as in Hirudo, etc. On the other hand, L. 
nilotica resembles II. javanica in the numerous small uniserial denticles and the papillae 'which are found 
on the sides of the jaws. Limnatis, as understood by Blanchard, is naturally divided by the character of 
the female reproductive organs into two genera, the one typified by I. nilotica, the other by II. javanica. 
The latter is the Pcecilobdella group and will probably be found to include all of the species which have 
been referred to that subgenus; but for this genus the name Hirudinaria Whitman has priority. 
A revised diagnosis of Hirudinaria based upon an examination of the type species and If. blanchardi 
is as follows: Resembling Limnatis in external annulation, lips, and jaws; the common oviduct and 
vagina have separate openings into a small bursa; the segmental sensitive are large and usually elongated 
1 From this island also three nominal species, referred to Hirudo and Hxmopis Moq.-l’an., were long ago described 
by Moquin-Tandon and Blainville. The habits of at least one of these suggest a Limnatis or Hirudinaria, but there is 
nothing in the descriptions of any of the three sufficient to identify it with the Porto Rican species. 
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