134 Annals of the South African Museum, 



families among which all the genera of the group will in that mono- 

 graph be distributed. The accompanying tabulation of several 

 characters will give the student an opportunity of understanding at 

 a glance and criticising at his leisure the proposed arrangement. 

 There are several obvious weaknesses. Besides those which depend 

 on unavoidable want of information, there are those due to alternative 

 characters, to reliance on features of little significance, and to the 

 use of indefinite terms such as large and small. In defence it may 

 be pleaded that the case is essentially one in which convenience 

 should be studied and compromise accepted, since Nature makes a 

 mock of our pragmatical divisions and is continually supplying the 

 links which the evolutionist desires and the systematist abhors. 



The naturalist who happens to be a grammarian, or the grammarian 

 who happens to be a naturalist, will find among the names of 

 Sympoda, as among the names in almost any other branch of 

 zoology, a plentiful supply of false concords. This arises from the 

 tiresome and ridiculous idea that the termination of a generic name 

 can make a species masculine, feminine, or neuter. How Nature 

 must laugh ! As though because of the Latin words Aqnila and 

 Vultur an eagle must be a hen and a vulture a cock ! Since some 

 one must make a beginning, if so inconvenient and unnatural a rule 

 is to be discountenanced and discarded, I here brave reproof and 

 reproach by making all the species of Sympoda of one and the same 

 gender, and that the masculine. In due time, if editors are graciously 

 pleased to allow it, the virtue of simplicity will be recognised and 

 common sense will win a victory over a vexatious custom." 



FAMILY VAUNTHOMPSONIID^E. 



1879. Vaunthompsoniidce, G. O. Sars, Arch. Naturv. Kristian., 

 vol. iv., p. 63. 



In this family, though there is no distinct telson, the telsonic 

 segment is notably produced between the peduncles of the uropods, 

 this being especially the case in the genus Gaussiciima, Zimmer, 1907. 

 In that genus the pseudorostral lobes do not meet in front of the 

 eyelobe, thus distinguishing it from Batliycuma, Hansen, 1895, in 

 which they do meet. Both these genera agree in having the second 

 joint of the third maxilliped strongly produced at the outer distal 



* See "Knowledge," vol. xxxiii., pp. 259 and 470, 1910, for a fuller discussion 

 of this subject. 



