1VIEMOIRS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 355 



The animals usually rest coiled up, with tin- eyes :i.iul antenna- directed outwards, just within 

 the month of the burrow. They are always on the alert and reach out and snap at every small 

 animal which approaches, even when it is two or three times larger than the Gouodactylus. They 

 rarely pursue their prey, at least in the day time, and while a bait held near the mouth of the bur- 

 trow will usually tempt them as far out as the. body can be stretched without leaving the burrow 

 they seldom go any further. In aquaria, they are much more active at night than in the daytime, 

 and they may possibly wander more in search of prey at night than I have ever seen them do in the 

 daytime. They are solitary in their habits, and I have never found two in the same burrow. They 

 are pugnacious to an astonishing degree, and their fighting habits, as I have observed them iu 

 aquaria, are so fixed and constant that they must be constantly exercised by the animals when at 

 home. When two .specimens are placed together in an aquarium they at first appear to be un- 

 conscious of each other, but more careful examination will show that their eye stalks are in con- 

 stant motion following each movement of the enemy. They soon assume a position in which they 

 are face to face, although they may be on opposite sides of the aquarium, and the constant motion 

 of their eye stalks shows how intently each movement is watched. Soon one attempts to get be- 

 hind the other, but each such attempt is frustrated, until finally they are brought close together, 

 face to face, and soon one springs suddenly upon the other and attempts to pinch some unprotected 

 part. They then spring apart and eye each other again to repeat the attack at short intervals 

 until one is disabled ; the other then springs upon him and soon tears him limb from limb, dis- 

 jointing all the free somites of the body and tearing out and devouring the flesh. 



I was not able to learn how the burrows are made, for none which I kept in captivity made 

 burrows. The regularity and smoothness of the burrows and their adaptation to the shape and 

 size of the body indicate that they are constructed by the animals themselves. The habit of bur- 

 rowing iu hard rock instead of soft mud is a fortunate one for the naturalist ; for, while it is almost 

 impossible to obtain the eggs of an ordinary Stomatopod without using a steam dredging machine; 

 it is easy to get those of Gouodactylus by breaking up the rock iu which it lives. 



While adult Stomatopods are abundant and widely distributed, their eggs are almost unknown, 

 for most of them inhabit deep burrows under the water, where it is no easy matter to capture the 

 adults, and even when these are caught they do not carry eggs even in the breeding season, for 

 the eggs are not fastened to the appendages as they are in most Crustacea, but are deposited at 

 the bottoms of the inaccessible burrows. As they are dependent upon the aeration which is pro- 

 duced by the current of water which the parent pumps through the burrow by means of the valve- 

 like paddles of the abdominal feet, they die wheu deprived of this current. The eggs are sometimes 

 obtained 1 ", but unless they are found in an advanced stage of development it is difficult to rear 

 them, and I know of no Stomatopod which has been reared from the egg tinder observation except 

 the Bahama Gonodactylus chiragra. As the pelagic larvae are large and conspicuous they are. 

 often captured at the surface of the ocean iu the tow net, and the number of genera and species of 

 Stomatopod larv;e which have beeu described is nearly equal to the number of adult species which 

 are known, and the opportunity to identify even one of these larvaj by actually rearing it from the 

 egg is a most noteworthy and important occasion. 



The habits of the Bahama Gonodactylus afford this opportunity; for the nature of the rock 

 which it inhabits prevents the construction of a deep burrow, and as the fragments of rock may 

 easily be carried ashore and broken up the eggs can be obtained without difficulty. At the time 

 of my first visit to the Bahamas I was engaged in correcting the proofs of my report on the Chal- 

 lenger Stomatopods, and one of the motives of the expedition was the hope that I might possibly 

 ohta.ii! Stomatopod eggs. A day or two after our arrival Dr. E. A. Andrews brought me a Gono- 

 dactylus and a bunch of yellow eggs, which he had picked out of a rock which he had broken to 

 pieces while searching for Annelids. The eggs were newly laid, and, while they were obviously 

 those of some crustacean, there was no evidence that they belonged to Gonodactylus except the 

 fact that they were found among the fragments of a rode which also contained this animal. As 

 soon as I saw the eggs and heard how they had been obtained I started for a point where the 

 beach was covered with fragments of coral rock. It was then late in the afternoon and growing 

 dark, but I waded into the water and carried ashore as large a rock as I could lift. After I had 

 thrown this on to a larger rock and broken it to pieces there was just daylight enough to show me 



