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Our knowledge of the Indian Rhynchobdellid leeches is still in its infancy, and the little that we have, we owe to the researches of Harding, Kaburaki, and Moore. After the publication of the Hirudinea volume by Harding & Moore (1927) in the Fauna of British India Series, Bhatia (1930a, b, 1934, 1939), Chelladurai (1934) and Raj (1951, 1954a, b) have contributed to the systematics of this group. The present work has been undertaken with a view to advancing further our knowledge of Indian Rhynchobdellid leeches. In this work, the neurosomic theory of somite limits launched independently by Castle (1900) and Moore (1900) has been followed in counting the annular composition of somites. This paper, the first of the series, deals with the description of four Glossiphonid leeches, of which three are new to science, while the fourth one is of zoogeographical importance.

During an examination of fishes for the parasitic crustaceans, fourteen specimens of Argulus belonging to two different species, viz. A. indicus Weber, 1892 (eight specimens) and A. siamensis Wilson, 1926 (six specimens) were collected from the fish, Ophiocephalus marulius Hamilton, taken from a canal in the environs of the village Champahati, District 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Out of seven fishes so obtained only three were found to be infected with the copepod parasites. While examining these copepods, the attention of the writer was drawn to a viviparous monogenetic trematode infecting only one species of Argulus, viz. A. indicus. It was rather unfortunate that the piscine host could not be examined at that stage for the helminthic infection. About one hundred specimens of this trematode were collected from the ventral surfaces of the copepods.

Two specimens of this fluke were collected from the nictitating membrane of the Steppe Eagle, Aquila nipalensis Hudson, shot near the lake Chinhut, about 5 miles from Lucknow, U.P.The body.(Fig. 1) is aspinose, flattened and clavate with a narrow anterior and a broadly rounded posterior end. It measures 4·5–5·9 mm. in length and 1·5–1·8 mm. in maximum width in the middle region. The oral sucker is terminal measuring 0·33–0·36 mm. X 0·47–0·49 mm. The ventral sucker is larger than the oral sucker, situated at the level of the division of. the anterior and middle-thirds of the body, and about 1·14 mm. from the anterior extremity. It measures 0·56–0·61 mm. X 0·52–0·54 mm.

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