CAPRELLA ACANTHIFEKA. 67 



one or two short, stiff spines. In the young the hand is 

 nearly of the same form as that of the female, hut the 

 palm is only imperfectly, if at all, defined. Between this 

 last and that of the male ahove described, we represent 

 in our plate four figures, ejihibiting various degrees 

 of development in different individuals of the same 

 species.* 



This species w^as 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. Tliompson, 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. 



* In the Britisli 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-excavated," — 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. 



p '-' 



