334 "ENDEAVOUR'' SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. 



Pemrus macleayi Phillipps, Austr. Zool., iv., 1, 1925, p. 3, 

 pi. ii., fig. i. 



Penteus liaswelli Phillipps, torn, cit., 1925, p. 3. 



30 



Through the kindness of the authorities of the Aus- 

 tralian Museum, I am able to record here some notes 

 upon a female cotype, and some other specimens of this 

 species forwarded to me through Mr. Allan McCulloch. 



The rostrum of the Port Jackson cotype is broken 

 and shows but five teeth. Another female specimen in 

 the Australian Museum from Port Jackson (Reg. No. 

 P. 1438) has seven teeth above, as did apparently the 

 specimens from Sydney, upon which de Man 31 commented. 

 Of three mature males before me, the largest, of about 

 101 mm. long over all, has six teeth above of which but 

 one is on the carapace, just behind the orbital margin. 

 The epigastric tooth, which ordinarily is situated almost 

 over the hepatic spine, is completely wanting. The two 

 smaller males have six and seven teeth respectively above, 

 as have two immature males, in which the halves of 

 the petasma are not yet united. Hence the number of 

 dorsal rostral teeth becomes from 5-7, rather than from 

 56 as given by Haswell. As noted by de Man, the more 

 or less styliform terminal portion is usually shorter than 

 half the length of the free portion of the rostrum. In the 

 Port Jackson female specimen with a complete rostrum, 

 two teeth, counting the epigastric, are on the carapace, 

 four on the basal half of the free portion of the rostrum, 

 and one, the seventh, just before its middle. The rostrum 

 is 20 mm. long and the tip of the last rostral tooth is 

 8-25 mm. from the tip of the rostrum. In the largest male 

 specimen, the penultimate rostral tooth is at the tuiddle 

 of the free portion of the rostrum, as it also is in two 



:;o In this paper Phillipps deals with the commercial aspect of 

 New South Wales prawns imported into New Zealand. He found that 

 the specimens he examined and identified as Penaeus macleayi differed 

 from Haswell's description of that species in the dentition of the 

 rostrum, and proposed the provisional name "Pe>tceus hasu'elli" in 

 the event of the differences being substantiated. 



The characters enlarged upon by Phillipps are negligible, as the 

 question of the rostral variation of Haswell's P. macleayi has 

 received detailed attention in the present report by Dr. Schmitt. 



Unfortunately the editor of the "Australian Zoologist" has 

 further complicated the nomenclature of Penceopsis macleayi by 

 including some misleading statements in an erratum notice which 

 appeared in the following issue of that journal (iv., pt. 2, 1925, p. 111). 

 He states that the prawn belongs to the genus Metapenceus. and 

 that the provisional name haswelli is preoccupied. Both these remarks 

 are incorrect. F. A. MCNEILL. 



31 Notes Leyden Mus. xii., 1890, p. 124. 



