498 Mr. G. Newport on some new Genera of Myriapoda. 



Echeneis naucrates {Linn. Auct.), Ship-master Echeneis. 



No. 7. Mr. Gilbert's list. 



This species is named "munnemullergo" by the natives 

 of Port Essington, who take it occasionally in the harbour. 

 Schneiders account of the fish is in many respects erroneous^ 

 the caudal fin being stated to be rounded instead of lunate ou 

 the margin, and the numbers of the rays, probably from ty- 

 pographical error, are wrongly noted. The Port Essington 

 specimen agrees in every respect with one from the West 

 Indies, preserved in the Haslar Museum. The rays are as 

 follow- s : — 



Br. 9-9; discal plates (1st dors.?) 24; D. 37 ; A. 37; 

 C. 16|;P.21;V.7. 



Artedi and Cuvier mention twenty-two as the usual number 

 of discal plates. 



LXIV. — On some new Genera of the Class Myriapoda. 

 By G. Newport, Esq.* 



The family Geophilidce of Leach, composed of those little, gliding, 

 wormlike Myriapodes so abundant in our gardens, and yet so imper- 

 fectly known to the scientific naturalist, includes at least two distinct 

 genera, one of which only has hitherto been characterised. Dr. Leach 

 himself, to whom we are indebted for the foundation of nearly all 

 the scientific knowledge we possess of these animals, appears to have 

 regarded one of the five native species with which he was acquainted 

 as distinct from the others, and placed it accordingly in a division of 

 his genus Geophilus, founding his divisions on the comparative length 

 of the joints of the antennae. These divisions, with the same di- 

 stinguishing characters, have been retained by M. Gervais, who in 

 1837 published a monograph on the whole class, and added a third 

 section to the genus Geophilus, composed of two species, one of which, 

 Geophilus ferrugineus, had been described by Koch ; and the other, 

 Geophilus maxillaris, was then first described by M. Gervais as a 

 new species. It is this division, added by M. Gervais, the Geophili 

 maxillares, which I now propose to establish as a separate genus, 

 under the name of Mecistocephalus, the characters of which, derived 

 from the peculiarly elongated form of the head, are as distinctly 

 marked as in any genus of this order. 



In a collection of Myriapoda, from the magnificent cabinet of the 

 Rev. F. W. Hope, which that gentleman many months ago, in the 

 most handsome manner, placed entirely at my control for the pur- 

 pose of describing, I discovered a third species, brought to this 

 country by the late Rev. Lansdowne Guilding, from the island of 

 St. Vincent, which I immediately recognized as a new genus ; and 

 on examining the unarranged specimens of Myriapoda in the collec- 

 tions of the British Museum, which the head of the zoological depart- 



* From the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for Dec. 13, 1842. 



