234 Annals of the South African Museum. 



DAIROIDES MAEGARITATUS, n. sp. 

 Plate XCVIII. 



The delicate specimen for which the new genus is instituted ai'rived 

 from the Cape in company with eight and a quarter of its limbs, but 

 all of them detached from the body, so that the respective lengths of 

 the ambulatory legs could not be assigned with certainty. The 

 somewhat depressed front of the carapace was also damaged, leaving 

 its proper character indefinite. The affinity of the species seems to be 

 with Daira and Actaea, for though the mouth-organs make a nearer 

 approach in shape to those figured by de Haan for his Cycloes, the 

 third maxillipeds are strictly confined to the mouth cavity, not, as in 

 that genus, produced to the frontal margin. 



The carapace, about 31 mm. broad at the broadest part below the 

 middle, is about 22 mm. long. Dorsally it is covei'ed by a mass of 

 shining tubercles, the crowding of which obscures their symmetrical 

 arrangement. On the ventral surface curved lines in front of the 

 mouth cavity and long lines of more or less bead-like prominences on 

 either side of that cavity and the pleon, together with the ornamenta- 

 tion of the pleon itself and of the third maxillipeds, pi-oduces a very 

 elegant appearance. Had the verrucose chelipeds and horny walking- 

 legs been in position, they would have diversified, perhaps without 

 enhancing, this artistic display. At the hinder end of the antero- 

 lateral margin a triplet of tubercles makes a decided projection ; 

 between this and the orbit at two points single tubercles feebly 

 project. The shell of the carapace in its intimate structure appears 

 to resemble that which Dana describes for Actaea cellulosa and figures 

 for Actaea areolata. There is an upper (calcareous?) tuberculate 

 layer with various small pei'f orations and a lower smooth (chitinous?) 

 layer with large cavities over which rest spinulose tubercles, the two 

 layers being connected by chitinous septa at intervals. The little 

 Clilorodius fragifer, Adams and White, has the eyes much more widely 

 apart and the teeth of the antei'o-lateral .margins much nearer 

 together. The genus Actaeomorpha, Miers, 1878, among the Oxy- 

 stomata, offers perplexing resemblances to the present form, but the 

 third maxillipeds are distinctive. 



Locality. Duruford Point, N.W. f W. 12 miles ; depth 90 fathoms 

 (Zululaiid). A 1606. 



GEN. CAEPILIUS, Leach. 



1825. Carpilius, Leach, in Desmarest, Consid. gen. Crust., p. 104, 

 footnote. 



