Notes on a new species of pedalion found in the Solomon Islands

The paper I have the honour to read before this Society might be entitled, with some truth, " The History of a Lost Opportunity." In a paper which I read before the Royal Microscopical Society of London, in 1889, on a "New Species of Megalotrocha," I spoke of Dunk Island, off the coast of Queensland "I found the water of such a solitary and lifeless pool literally swarming with a wonderful pedalion." But at that time (1888) I did not realise that this rotifer was a totally distinct and new species. Last August (1893) whilst examining some water collected in the artificially hollowed-out trunk of a coconut tree, made by the natives of New Georgia for drinking purposes, and growing on a small island in Eendoya Harbour, Solomon Islands, I once again came across this pedalion in considerable numbers. Then I recognised my old friend of the Australian coast, and realised that it was a new species, differing in essential details from the only known species of Pedalion, P. mirum. Before I could, however, complete mv examination of this rotifer, the news arrived that this same species had been discovered by Dr. Levander, of Helsingfors, in Finland, in October, 1892, and had been named by him P. fennicum four years after I first had seen it.