A REVIEW OF THE MYSIDACEA 9 



Mysis stenolepis. Between 1850 and 1870 there was much activity in 

 Arctic exploration, and this led to numerous records of Mysis oculata 

 from the Arctic shores of North America down to Labrador. In the 

 years 1871-74 the investigation of the fresh-water lakes of North 

 America resulted in the discovery of Mysis relicta in the Great Lakes 

 of Canada. The real basis of our knowledge of American Mysidacea 

 was laid when the United States Fish Commission started work in 

 1871. Its dredging and trawling operations yielded a rich harvest 

 of zoological material from the northeast coasts of the United States, 

 and papers by Smith and Verrill, detailing the results of their exam- 

 ination of the Crustacea, gave the first description of the Mysidacea 

 of this area. The most important of these papers, by S. I. Smith 

 (1879), brought together all that was known of the American species 

 at that date and included the rich material of the United States Fish 

 Commission. This work was supplemented by similar investigations 

 undertaken by the Canadian Fisheries Department (Whiteaves, 

 1874b) . Thus was revealed the rich mysidacean fauna in the deeper 

 waters of the Atlantic slope of this part of the American coast. As 

 the work of the Fish Commission developed, the need for a larger re- 

 search vessel made itself felt and resulted in the building and equip- 

 ment of the Albatross. With the advent of this vessel the operations 

 of the Commission were enormously extended. Not only was the 

 deeper water of the Atlantic explored, but cruises were made in the 

 Pacific and resulted in the important papers of Faxon (1893, 1895, 

 1896) and Ortmann (1894), in which a number of very important 

 and interesting species were described from the west coast of Central 

 America. The Albatross subsequently made many cruises in the 

 North Pacific and accumulated a vast amount of valuable material, 

 most of which is dealt with in this paper. In 1894 Holmes commenced 

 his studies of the Pacific coast Crustacea, and between that date and 

 1900 he published three papers in which species of Mysidacea from 

 that area were described (Holmes, 1894, 1896, 1900). In 1906 Ort- 

 mann commenced work on the collections of Mysidacea in the United 

 States National Museum and published two valuable papers, one, in 

 1906, which dealt with the Lophogastridae and Eucopiidae, and the 

 other, in 1908, on material from Alaska. It is greatly to be regretted 

 that Ortmann was unable to complete the work so splendidly begun. 

 Deep-sea expeditions from European countries have contributed their 

 quota to our knowledge of the American fauna, mainly as the result 

 of incidental collections made in American waters as the expeditions 

 were passing through, so to speak. The Challenger expedition (1873- 

 1876) called at Valparaiso, and collected Siriella thompsonii and 

 Euchaetomera tenuis off the coast of Chile, then worked southward 

 along the coasts of South America, through the Straits of Magellan 



