i06 On the AstacillcB of Cordiner. 



of North Britain/* Though the professed object of the work 

 was the ehicidation of the remains of antiquity, the author was 

 induced to pubHsh twenty-four plates, containing the figures of 

 marine animals, chiefly obtained from the Moray Frith. A 

 few of these objects had been previously described in the 

 writings of Mr. Pennant, and other British naturalists, but the 

 greater part constituted additions to our Fauna. Though the 

 figures in general display the taste of the painter rather than 

 the discernment of the naturalist, and the descriptions offend 

 by their inflated style and want of precision, I have been able 

 to identify several species, of which Cordiner's figures are the 

 first indications. To these I have referred at the proper places 

 among the mollusca and radiata, in the first volume of " Bri- 

 tish Animals/' 



Attached to the twenty-first number of the work there is a 

 plate marked " Astacilla, Purple Doris," &c., 1793. This 

 contains four figures of a crustaceous animal which was 

 dredged up a few leagues from the coast of Banff. The figures 

 express some of the attitudes and habits of the species, and 

 sufficiently indicate its want of accordance with any of the 

 species or genera at that period recognised by naturalists. The 

 description annexed merely states, that " the diminutive Asta- 

 cilla, of the generic name of lobsters, is applied at present as 

 a common characteristic, until one more particularly appro- 

 priate may be fixed on to distinguish it by ; for these are a 

 species that do not appear to have been yet recognised among 

 the varieties of British insects." It is also added, '* the eye 

 appeared as a regular arrangement of bright specks, in circular 

 rows." In reference to their dwelling he observes, *' The 

 AsTACiLLiE, having their residence among the tender corals, 

 which can only s[)read their beautiful forms in the calm and 

 tranquillity of those regions of the deep where winter-storms 

 never have power to agitate the bottom, they only can be 

 brought ashore with those peculiar clusters of corallines among 

 which they dwell ; and the many chances against falling in with 

 any one rare and particular species, in the wide extent of these 

 their dwellings, so remote from human eye, is an obvious 

 cause why many of these have been so long, and may yet re- 

 main, undehneated and unUescribed." In the plate to which 

 we have referred, these astacillse are represented with their 



