Peripatus Re-discovered in Jamaica

Abstract

MRS. E. M. SWAINSON has been so fortunate as to find on Beacon Hill, near Bath, three specimens of Peripatus, which she has sent to the Institute of Jamaica. The species is doubtless identical with that found by Gosse many years ago at the other end of the island. Of the two specimens which we have studied, one has 36 pairs of legs, and is dark pinkish-brown, with the ends of the antennæ pure white, in striking contrast; the other is smaller and darker, without white ends to the antennæ, and with only 29 pairs of legs. The third example, which we have still alive, is larger, but dark in colour. Full details will be given elsewhere later on, and it may suffice for the present to state that the species is very closely allied to P. Edwardsii from Venezuela, as described by Sedgwick, but differs in the greater number of legs and the white-tipped antennæ of certain individuals (probably the females), in the only slightly curved (not hooked) claws, in the differentiation of the papillæ into two distinct kinds on the dorsal surface, and apparently in other minor matters. There is no dark dorsal line. The genital orifice is between the penultimate pair of legs; and the jaws are almost precisely as in Edwardsii. The Jamaican species being evidently new, it is proposed to call it Peripatus jamaicensis.