BRITISH ASSOCIATION-. 259 



ment I may mention that all except two (one a marine species) have 

 occurred to me in a garden not sixty yards square, and nearly all in 

 abundance. 



It would appear to have been the fashion with carcinologists (pro- 

 bably on account of the terrestrial habits of most of the genera), to nearly 

 ignore their existence, and hence the mistakes with which the authori- 

 ties abound. This renders a brief sketch of the bibliography of the group 

 necessary. 



Historical Bibliography. 



Although a host of writers have from the earliest days of science 

 noticed these animals, yet the true nature of their generic, specific, 

 and familiar relations have been so totally misunderstood, and the cha- 

 racters drawn on for diagnosis are of so little real value, that we may 

 pass over the labours of the majority of authors, and come at once to the 

 works published within the last twenty years, the rather as this part of 

 the subject has been so ably treated of by Professor A. Lereboullet in the 

 " Transactions of the Strasbourg Society," just now to be referred to. 



Passing, therefore, over the writings of Linnaeus, Geoffroy, Fabri- 

 cius, De Greer, Cuvier, Leach, Dunieril, Latreille, Risso, Savigny, and 

 a host of others, whose characters, drawn from colour chiefly, render 

 their descriptions worse than useless, we will come to Brandt, who ap- 

 pears to have caught at the true distinctive characters of form, and may 

 be said to have laid the first foundation of a perfectly natural system, in 

 his " Conspectus Monographic Crustaceorum Oniscodorum," published 

 in Moscow in 1833 , and although in some instances he has stopped short 

 in his analysis, and has even mistaken the true import of some of the 

 characters, yet it must be a matter of regret that this naturalist has 

 not yet fulfilled his promise by giving to the world a full history of the 

 group. 



Milne-Edwards, who comes next in order of time, has scarcely in 

 this sustained his well-deserved reputation in other groups, as this part 

 of his work is replete with errors of a serious nature, and the descrip- 

 tions, many of them copied verbatim from the earlier writers, and mere 

 accounts of colours, are useless. Witness the description of Philoscia 

 museorum, a genus which he can scarcely have examined, or he would 

 not have proposed that it should be reunited to Oniscus, a genus from 

 which, as we shall see, it differs widely. 



In the fourth volume of the " Memoirs of the Natural History Society 

 of Strasbourg," published in 1853, appears a paper from the pen of Pro- 

 fessor A. Lereboullet, M. D., Director of the Museum at Strasbourg, 

 entitled, " Sur les Crustaces de la Eamille des Cloportides qui habitent 

 les Environs de Strasbourg," of which it is impossible to speak in too 

 high terms, whether we regard the minuteness of details, or the author's 

 patient investigations into the labours of others, and although in one or 

 two points he has evidently fallen into error, yet, as a whole, this little 

 work must be long looked on as a standard on the subject. 



I must here also notice an excellent, but scarce little work, which 



