MUCH LEARNING 63 



from St. Helena was carefully described by Mr. Miers, who 

 pointed out its resemblance to and differences from XantJio 

 Bouvieri, A. Milne-Edwards, a species from the Cape Verd 

 Islands. In 1886 Mr. Miers re-described it, and gave a 

 figure of it in his ' Challenger Report,' but he then placed it 

 in a new sub-genus Euryozius^ entitling it ' Pseudozius 

 bouvieri, var. melUssii^^ in a hesitating manner identifying 

 it with the species Xantho Bouvieri of A. Milne-Edwards. 

 In 1888 Professor Th. Barroi^ in his catalogue of the 

 marine Crustacea of the Azores, once more describes this 

 species, and gives a beautiful figure of it in its natural 

 colour of bright orange-red, with black tips to the cheli- 

 peds. He and Mr. Miers are in exact agreement in their 

 descriptions, as two such excellent naturalists were likely 

 to be. But Professor Barrois calls the species Ozius 

 Bdivardsi, and explains that he had submitted it to the 

 highly competent judgment of M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, 

 who pronounced it to be a new Ozius, of which he had 

 himself obtained a specimen at the Canaries during the 

 expedition of the Talisman. It will be consoling to the 

 beginner and the amateur, when involved in perplexity 

 amid species that they cannot name or can only name at 

 random, to find the past masters of the science thus en- 

 tangled as it were in their own web. For it must not be 

 forgotten that Alphonse Milne-Edwards is acknowledged 

 to be ' the highest authority on the Brachyura,' ^ and yet he 

 leads Barrois to make a new species of that which had 

 been twice described and twice named by Miers, and which 

 had probably been already named and described by Pro- 

 fessor Milne-Edwards himself. The instance is significant 

 of the stress, to which the highest powers must sometimes 

 prove unequal, of keeping in mind each individual species 

 of the vast multitude now known, and each individual 

 chapter of the vast literature which records them. 



Barrois mentions an interesting peculiarity in this ele- 

 gant crab. The carapace along the antero-lateral margins 

 is obliquely striated on the under side with fine parallel 

 grooves, in correspondence with which the fifth joint or 

 ' Miers, Challenger BepoTt, p. 146. 



