4 ALLAN HANCOCK PACIFIC EXPEDITIONS VOL. 21 



collections of the U. S. National Museum with New World species 

 descrihed by these authors. Therefore the writer has confined his per- 

 sonal investigations to the Smithsonian collection, and to collections of 

 other institutions of eastern North America in which crustacean type 

 material is located ; namely, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 

 Harvard, the New York Zoological Society and the American Museum 

 of Natural History in New York, and the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Sciences. At each of these institutions specimens collected by the Velero 

 III were compared with types or with previously determined material, 

 and in this way the identity of specimens in the collection of the Allan 

 Hancock Foundation with species described or identified by early Amer- 

 ican carcinological workers was established. Basic to the Hancock Foun- 

 dation collection is a set of specimens determined for F. C. Ziesenhenne 

 and the writer prior to 1937 by the late Miss Rathbun and containing 

 most of her west coast brachyuran species. 



Although the European types were not reexamined, letters of inquiry 

 concerning the safety of type collections were directed to institutions in 

 the principal cities of Europe, several of which were subjected to aerial 

 bombardment in World War II. Favorable replies were received from 

 curators in London, Paris, Hamburg, Turin, and Geneva. The absence 

 of a direct report from Naples leads to the belief that the types of Cano 

 have been destroyed, a circumstance attested to by Dr. Lucia Rossi of 

 the Turin Museum. 



The early west coast collections were destroyed by a series of major 

 catastrophes: the types of Lockington in the California Academy of 

 Sciences by the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906; the Chilean 

 collection of Porter by the Valparaiso earthquake and fire of the same 

 year; the Mexican collection of A. Milne Edwards by the shelling of 

 Paris in 1870; and the west coast material of Stimpson, sent him by the 

 Smithsonian Institution, by the Chicago fire of October 8, 1871. Less 

 spectacular, but equally effective, were the slow disintegrative processes 

 which in time claimed the types of Bell in Britain and of Dana in 

 America. 



The destruction of types raises the question of establishing substitute 

 types, called neotypes, a practice gaining favor among systematists and 

 in the writer's opinion clearly justified in the case of many west coast 

 brachyuran species. However, in view of the recommendations of the 

 Fourteenth International Congress of Zoology, and in deference to the 

 opinions of his colleagues, the writer has refrained from designating 



