216 BOPYRID^. 



breadth to its extremity, which is rounded, the six 

 segments of which it is composed having the lateral 

 margins thinner than those of the body ; on the upper 

 side the articulations are almost obliterated, whilst its 

 lower surface is covered with five pairs of pleopoda, each 

 consisting of a single membranous plate of a somewhat 

 triangular form, the terminal segment being destitute of 

 any lateral appendage. 



The genus Bopyrus was established by Latreille in one 

 of his earliest works, and was placed by him amongst the 

 Isopodom crustaceans, being, in the first edition of the 

 " Regne Animal," placed at the end of the order, 

 with the view of showing what might be regarded 

 as its organic degradation as compared with the other 

 animals of the order. In the second edition of the same 

 work, however, Latreille placed the genus at the begin- 

 ning of the order, in a section termed Epicarides, with the 

 view of bringing it into close connection with the Cymo- 

 thoades, with which it has an evident affinity. 



In 1772, M. Fougeroux de Bondaroy published a 

 memoir on B. squiltarum,* in which he completely dis- 

 proved the old fallacy entertained by fishermen on the 

 coasts of France, that the Bopyri were the young of 

 soles or other flat fish which took shelter under the 

 shell of the prawn to protect them in the early state of 

 their existence an idea which even Deslandes had held 

 and recorded in the Memoires de 1'Academie Royale des 

 Sciences de Paris in 1772. 



In 1837 some interesting observations upon the genus 

 were published by Heinrich Rathke, " De Bopyro et 

 Nereide. Rigae et Dorpati," 4to ; also in his work 

 on morphology, " Reisebemerkungen aus Tamien." 



* Hist, de 1'Acad. des Sciences, 1772, p. 29, t. 1. 



