26 BCRMA, ITS PEOPLE AXD PRODUCTIONS. 



Family GalatheidsB. 

 Galathea elegans. 



Family Alpheidse. 

 Alpheus, sp. Arakan. 



Family Thalassinidae. 



TaALASSINA SCOEPIONOIDES. 



Tliis is a remarkable form, very clon,E;ate, and a redoubted burrower, classed 

 by Milno -Edwards in liis tribe of Cri/ptobrunchiilfs FouiKscurs. "Whoever has walked 

 through mangrove swamps must have remarked, in spots where the ground was 

 rather sandy and elevated, great heaps of dark sandy muil, ejeeted by some animal 

 from its burrow, the material brought up being moulded into rude balls, of sizes 

 proportionate to the occtipant of each hole, some heaps being composed of balls the 

 size of walnuts, others of various smaller dimensions. It is wonderful to think 

 how so friable a material as this sandy mud often is, can be moulded into such 

 fomis, and still more when it is found that the animal which brings up these 

 incoherent balls of sand is a crab, whose hard claws (if they are the organs 

 employed) seem but ill adapted for such work. The burrows of these crustaceans 

 are a couple of feet or more deep, and rather difficult to follow, and would seem 

 to be carried down to a depth at which water is met with at any state of the tide. 

 The animal resembles a small, very elongated, lobster more than anything else, of 

 a ruddy brown colour, with two narrow and une(|ual claws, and when extracted 

 from its burrow is somewhat sluggish and helpless, and its habits would doubtless 

 well repay a careful study. 



Family Astacidse. 



NEPHEorsis, Wood-Mason. 



Differs from Xephrops in wanting the antcnnal scale. 



Mr. Wood-Mason thus writes of this interesting form: "The discovery in 

 these warm seas of a very near, of the nearest ally in fact, of so characteristic 

 a cold-water species {Nephrops), remarkable though it is, will not appear so 

 sui-prising when I mention the fact that my crustacean lived and burrowed in the 

 mud of the sea-bed at a depth of nearly 300 fathoms in a temperature not certainly 

 exceeding 50° Fahr. 



" One of the chief points of interest attaching to this new foiTa lies in the loss 

 of its organs of ^•ision by disuse, as in Calocaris MacAndreweic, Bell, and Cambanis 

 pellucidus — a member of the same family as that to which Nephropsis belongs — and 

 in the other cnistaceans and animals inhabiting the caves of C'arniola and Kentucky. 

 I not only agree with Mr. Darwin in attributing the loss of the eyes to disuse, but 

 I also regard the great length and delicacy of the antennsc, and the great de- 

 velopment of the auditory organs as modifications cfl'ected by natural selection in 

 compensation for blindness." — J. A. S. 13., 1873. 



*'E. Stewaeii, Wood-Mason. Dredged off the Andamans. 



The type was a female. Length of body 4 inches, of antennae 7-25 inches. 



EcTEICnOCHELES MODESTUS. 



A small crustacean which Mason terms the "mangrove-swamp prawn," burrows 

 in considerable numbers in the banks of tidal creeks intersecting the mangrove 

 swamps. It is some two inches in length, with very unequal claws, one being 

 very stout. It is, I think, this creature which produces the curious metallic 

 ' click ' one often hears when gliding in a canoe at low tide through these narrow 

 channels. 



