ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 237 



C. Spence Bate, F.L.S., Corresponding Member, Dublin University 

 Zoological and Botanical Association, sent the following paper — 



ON THE GENUS NIPHAKGU8 (sCHIODTe). 



When the study of Carcinology was yet in its youth, Leach found, in a 

 well attached to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a small shrimp-like crus- 

 tacean. This he took to be of the genus Gammarus, and called it 

 sukerraneus. The specimen has, I believe, not been preserved, and we 

 know no more about it than what he tells us in the " Edinburgh Cyclo- 

 paedia." The name has been perpetuated in catalogues. But that a crus- 

 tacean of so high a form should be found in a dark well in the centre 

 of London, has been considered more in the light of a stray and acci- 

 dental occurrence than that such should be the normal abode of a race 

 of beings so high. Little attention had the subject attracted in Eng- 

 land until Mr. Westwood's very capital discovery, in 1853, of consider- 

 able numbers of a similar animal, which he procured by pumping from 

 a deep well near Maidenhead, from which time until the discoveries of 

 young Mr. Mullins, at Corsham, "Wiltshire, and those of the Rev. A. R. 

 Hogan, at Ringwood, Hampshire, I am not aware that any has been 

 made in England. 



Between the years 1835 and 1842, Koch published a series of papers, 

 in which appeared some figures of Amphipoda, which he procured from 

 the draw-wells about Reigensburg and Zweiburucken ; these he consi- 

 dered to be one species, and named them Gammarus Puteanus. 



About 1851 Schiodte found in the grottoes in Carniola a similar 

 crustacean, which he described and figured in the " Danish Royal So- 

 ciety's Transactions." He appears to have been the first that recog- 

 nised the true character of these subterranean Amphipoda. 



Schiodte very properly placed them in a genus by themselves ; but 

 I question whether he is quite as correct in separating the Maidenhead 

 species from his own, to which position Mr. Westwood had assigned it 

 in the " Proceedings of the Linnrean Society for 1853." 



In his description of Westwood's species, Schiodte says that it is 

 dorsally carinated, but that N. itygius is not so. Examinations of the 

 specimens deposited in the British Museum show this to be an erroneous 

 impression, and Mr. Adam White, in his valuable " Manual of the Bri- 

 tish Crustacea," while accepting Schiodte' s description of the species, 

 omits to notice so striking and important a peculiarity, which he pro- 



