CAPRELLA ACANTHIFERA. 67 
one or two short, stiff spines. In the young the hand is 
nearly of the same form as that of the female, but the 
palm is only imperfectly, if at all, defined. Between this 
last and that of the male above described, we represent 
in our plate four figures, exhibiting various degrees 
of development in different individuals of the same 
species.* 
This species was first excellently figured by M. De 
Queronic, as above referred to, from a specimen found 
amongst the branches of a Fucus, covered with coral- 
lines, in the Bay of Loc Mariaker, on the coast of 
Brittany. It has been taken at Plymouth by Mr. 
Barlee on Drake’s Island at low water spring-tides, as 
well as dredged by ourselves in Plymouth Sound. Mr. 
Edward has sent it to us from Banff, the Rev. A. M. 
Norman from Northumberland, and we have received it 
from Mr. Robertson from Millport. Specimens are also 
in the Belfast Museum Collection, obtained by the late 
W. Thompson, Esq., who found it amongst Corallina 
officinalis, in shallow pools between tide-marks, at Spring- 
Vale, County Down, in July, 1846. It is also in the 
Bell Collection at Oxford, taken by the Rev. J. Gordon 
in the Frith of Forth. 
* Jn the British Museum is preserved a series of this species, to one of the 
individuals of which the specific name C. acanthifera is attached in the hand- 
writing of Dr. Leach, whose description, -—‘‘ Back, especially the hinder part, 
spiny; inner edge of the second pair of hands lunate-excayated,’”—is so short 
and insufficient as to have led Mr. Spence Bate into the idea that the fol- 
lowing species was the true C. acanthifera, and the present one, consequently, 
undescribed. Dr. Leach found his species not uncommon on the Devonshire 
coast, and forwarded specimens to Latreille with the MS. name of C. acumi- 
nifera, which was adopted by Latreille and Desmarest, the former of whose 
descriptions is evidently taken from a male of C. acanthifera. Both these 
names have been misapplied by Johnston and R. Q. Couch to the cornuted 
females of the following species. 
