MARINE CRUSTACEANS. 
I. ON VARIETIES. II. PORTUNIDAE. 
By L. A. Borraparte, M.A., Lecturer in Natural Sciences of Selwyn College, 

Cambiidge. 
(With Text-figures 35—38.) 
INTRODUCTION. 
THE collection of Crustaceans from the Island of Minikoi! and the Maldive Group has 
been divided, for purposes of description and comment, into two halves of widely different 
biological interest. Of these the first, containing the land forms, has been reported upon in 
Part I. of this publication. The second, containing the marine forms, is too bulky to be 
described in a single article, and has accordingly been divided into a series of sections which 
will be dealt with by instalments, of which these pages form the first. Most of the sections 
will be undertaken by the writer of this introduction, but the collection of prawns of the 
family Alpheidae is in the hands of Professor Coutiére, of Paris. 
In reporting on such a collection as this, various questions of a general nature arise, 
such as that of the crustacean fauna of the several zones of depth, which are best left over 
for consideration till the whole of the material has been examined. 
there is one such question which seems to demand attention at an earlier stage. 
Meanwhile, however, 
In former 
papers* I have often had occasion to describe and classify groups of individuals to which 
1 By one of the fatalities that wait upon all expeditions, a 
great part of the Crustaceans from Minikoi were destroyed on 
the way to England. Fortunately the accident is mitigated 
by the fact that it is often possible to recognise in the Maldive 
collection forms seen at Minikoi. It will be necessary to 
allude to this in the course of the following sections, but the 
warning must now be given that the absence of mention of 
Minikoi as a locality for any species is not to be taken to 
mean that it is not to be found there. 
[A large spirit-tank was apparently tapped on the way home 
and the greater part of the fluid withdrawn. It contained in 
numbered packages Mr Borradaile’s and my collections of 
G. 
Crustacea from Minikoi, which were almost completely rotted. 
The loss is greatly to be regretted, as the habitat, mode of 
life, ete., in short the natural history of the specimens in 
each bag was carefully noted and there is now no means of 
ascertaining to what species Mr Borradaile’s notes apply. 
Ep.] 
2 “On some Crustaceans from the South Pacific,” Pts. 
I, U. Iv. and v., P. Z.S. 1898, pp. 32 and 457; and 1900, 
pp. 568 and 795; and ‘‘On the Stomatopoda and Macrura 
brought by Dr Willey from the South Seas,” Willey’s Zool. 
Results, Pt. 1v., Cambridge, 1900. 
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