Peripatus N. Zealandiæ

Abstract

IN the November number of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History is a paper by Capt. Hutton on Peripatus N. Zealandiæ, in which the author comes to the astounding results that this species is hermaphrodite, and that its horny jaws are not foot jaws but homologous with those of annelids such as Eunice. If such were in reality the case much of my results concerning Peripatus capensis (Phil. Trans. R. Soc., 1874, vol. clxiv. Part 2) would lose its value, and since I believe Peripatus to be a most important form, and a representative of the ancestral stock of all tracheates, in fact of the Protracheata of Prof. Haeckel, I hasten to write a few words in reply.