Zoological Society. 263 



since it was merely requisite to place a mass of the filaments of Spi- 

 rogyra crassa about to conjugate, in a basin of water, and then watch 

 the changes above mentioned, which would be sure to occur in many 

 of the conjugating filaments ; but of course, to be understood, they 

 required a practised eye, or to be pointed out by a person conversant 

 with the subject. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



May 13, 1856.— Dr. Gray, F.R.S., in the Chair. 

 Some remarks on Crustacea of the genus Lithodes, 



WITH A brief description OF A SpECIES APPARENTLY 

 HITHERTO UNRECORDED. By AdAM WhITE. 



The group Lithodes^ founded by Latreille upon our well-known, 

 though not very common, spine-covered, empty-bodied Lithodes 

 Maitty begins now to become better known. Of the excellent figure 

 of this type of the genus, published by Dr. Leach in his * Malacostraca 

 Britannica,' it is sufficient to say that it was drawn and engraved by 

 the late James Sowerby, F.L.S., and coloured from his pattern. 



A very young specimen, procured by R. M'^ Andrew, Esq., F.R.S., 

 during his late Norwegian cruise, shows that in the young state the 

 asperities are rather sharper, and the carapace is decidedly longer in 

 comparison with its breadth, than in the adult state ; the arrested 

 development of the pieces forming the tail is characteristic in the 

 adult as it is in the young specimen, 1 inch long, dredged by Mr. 

 Barrett, and presented by Mr. M'' Andrew to the Museum. 



Seba (vol. iii. pi. 22. f. 1) has figured a specimen with longer and 

 more divergent terminal horns to the rostrum. As a bad specimen 

 exists of this variety in the Paris Museum, Prof. Milne-Edwards 

 fancies, and with good reason too, that it may prove a distinct species ; 

 he has provisionally named it Lithode douteuse (Crust, ii. 186); 

 at all events, it is a variety which research may find in this country, 

 for diiferent specimens diifer in their degrees of divergence in the 

 horns of the rostrum. 



Haan, in his * Fauna Japonica,' 217. t. 47, has figured the male 

 oi Lithodes Camschaticay a species first described as Maia Cams- 

 chatica by Tilesius in the * St. Petersburg Memoirs,' v. p. 336. pi. 5. 

 & 6, the female (1812). This species is named by the Chinese 

 Sima-gani — that is, the Insular Crab. 



Tilesius tells us that it is found on the shore of Kamschatka, 

 among the rocks, where it conceals itself and keeps sedentary, living 

 upon cuttle-fish {Sepia octopodia), and snaring Starfishes and 

 MoUusca. He records that this Lithodes fixes itself so firmly and 

 resolutely in a hole of a rock, that you could not draw it out without 

 breaking its shell. He compares the tenacity with which the Lithodes 

 is held in the hollow of the rock to the fixedness of the Echinus 

 mmnmillaris. 



The same learned naturalist has figured another large species from 

 Japan (218. t. 48) as the Lithodes hystrix ; it is one which Siebold, in 



