A DECEPTION DETECTED 107 



li ensile, thus making six pairs of legs, with a structural 

 arrangement as regards three of them that would be unique 

 among the Brachyura. At each date the species is said 

 to come from the Isle of Guadeloupe. Leach rightly per- 

 ceived that error and confusion were lurking somewhere, 

 if it should not rather be said that they are conspicuous 

 on the face of the two discordant accounts. Milne- 

 Edwards in 1837, though wdth a confession of great un- 

 certainty, institutes tor the single genus Padolus the tribe of 

 the Pactoliens, w^hich he places among the Anomura. But 

 soon after, in 1839, de Haan with great acuteness ob- 

 served, ^Padolus, Leach, Zoological Miscellanies, vol. ii. 

 tab. 6S, seems to me to be made up of the thorax of a 

 female Leptopodia sar/ittaria, to which the legs of some 

 other animal have been united ; for the thorax of Padolus, 

 just as also the rostrum and abdomen, agrees with the 

 female Leptopodia. The unlikeness in colour between the 

 legs and the thorax in the figure referred to at once 

 reveals the deception. Never are two alien forms found, 

 agreeing exactly in the thorax, yet so disagreeing in the 

 legs.' The principle here enunciated is worth remembering, 

 as in some parts of the world there are dealers who delight 

 and find profit and have also great skill in fabricating mon- 

 strosities, sometimes such as have deceived the very elect. 

 - Nearly related to Inachus is the gigantic Macrocheira 

 Kiiinpferi^ de Haan, 1839, of which mention has been 

 earlier made. In Japanese it is called the insular crab. 



Hitenia is another genus of this family instituted by 

 de Haan in 1 839. The name refers to the acutely trian- 

 gular form of the carapace, and is derived from the Greek 

 word vvcs, a ploughshare, a derivation which would have 

 been hard to guess, had not de Haan obligingly mentioned 

 it himself At the foot of his plate 23 he names the 

 figures ' 4. Maja (Huenia) elongata n. 5. id. variet. 6. 

 Maja (Huenia) heraldica n.' But the species established 

 in the text is M^ija (Huenia) proteus. The double generic 

 name results from the inconvenient practice, still some- 

 times followed, of splitting a genus up into sub-genera. 

 Sub-genera, if they are worth anything, are pretty sure to 



