A New and Annectant Type of Chilopod

The continent of Australia and its adjacent islands have hitherto proved singularly disappointing in the production of interesting types of Chilopoda. Setting aside Cermatobins, which was discovered some fifteen years back in the island of Adenara, none of the genera known up to the present time from the Australian region throw special light upon the phylogeny of the families of this class ; none can be regarded as archaic forms that have found refuge in this southern tract of land. Collections made in various districts of the country have yielded specimens of Scutigera, Henicops, Lithobius, Scolopendra, Cryptops, Geophilus—genera which may be met with on a single hillside in almost any part of Southern Europe; of Cormocephalus and Ethmostigmus, which in an almost equal degree are characteristic of tropical Africa or the Oriental region. The entire fauna, in short, bears the stamp of comparatively recent origin by immigration from South Eastern Asia, with perhaps an infusion from the Ethiopian region or Madagascar.