F 



KEY TO THE ISOPODS OF THE ATLANTIC COAST OF 



NORTH AMERICA WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW 



AND LITTLE KNOWN SPECIES. 



By Harriet Richardson, 



Collaborator, Division of Marine Invertebrates. 



American naturalists have added much to our knowledge of the 

 Atlantic coast isopoda. 



In 1818 Thomas Say published An Account of the Crustacea of the 

 United States, which was the lirst attempt to contribute to the knowl- 

 edge of the fauna of North America. In 1853 a number of new 

 species from Grand Manan were described by William Stimpson. A 

 report on the invertebrate animals of Vineyard Sound, by A. E. Ver- 

 rell and S. I. Smith, followed in 1874, and in 1880 Oscar Harger's 

 valuable work on the Isopoda of Vineyard Sound and Adjacent 

 Waters was published. 



In addition to the work done by American naturalists, about this 

 time the Danish naturalists Schioedte and Meinert, in their mono- 

 graph of the Cymothoidce, published descriptions and figures of a num- 

 ber of new species from the West Indies. A few years later (188T) 

 H. J. Hansen gave an account of the fauna of Greenland, and in 1890 

 the same author greatly increased the number of known species of 

 isopoda from the West Indies. 



More recently Adrien Dollfus (1896) reported on some new West 

 Indian ArmadUUd'uhv, and Ives in 189-1 described some new species 

 from Yucatan and Vera Cruz. 



Norman and Stebbing and others to be mentioned later have like- 

 wise contributed to a knowledge of the North American fauna. 



The aim of the present paper is to give a complete list of all the 

 described species of isopoda on the Atlantic coast of North America, 

 including Greenland and the West Indies. 



In preparing the synopses of the families and genera, definitions 

 and keys from many authors have been used, those of greatest value 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vou XXIII— No. 1222. 



493 



