35 



According- to Herbst this beautiful Macruran is found at 

 the Cape in mountain streams. It is, he says, very like the 

 common European river Crayfish, but of more slender form, 

 with an almost uniform breadth, the colour coral-red, with a 

 fine polish like carnelian. What the colour might be in 

 living specimens he had no means of deciding. He describes 

 the arm or fourth joint of the front chelipeds as relatively 

 small, the fifth as almost larger than the fourth and strongly 

 tuberculate, the hands as large, with a margin very delicately 

 raised and curved, and as everywhere coated with long, 

 yellow, transparent hairs. He declares tliat all the four 

 following pairs of feet have chelate apices, in contrast with 

 the common river Crayfish, in which only the first two pairs 

 are so constructed. This account agrees very well with the 

 figure given on Herbst's plate. It agrees almost too well, 

 suggesting a suspicion that the author wrote his description 

 from the figure rather than from the specimen, for there is 

 reason to suppose that the hands of the chelipeds have the 

 long hairy coating only on the outer and not on the inner 

 surface, and that the fourth and fifth pairs of trunk-legs are 

 simple, not chelate. 



Milne-Edwards in changing the name to Houiarus capcnsis 

 shows that he did not believe in the chelate character of the 

 last two pairs of trunk-legs. He gives the description as 

 follows : — Body slender. Rostrum flattened, much shorter than 

 the peduncle of the outer antennae, and finely denticulate on 

 the edges. Wrist granular, hands elongate, very compressed, 

 furnished on the upper edge with a finely denticulate crest, 

 and covered with hairs above. Length about 5 inches. The 

 letters C M. appended to this description testify that Milne- 

 Edwards had a specimen at his command. He goes on to 

 say that the Astacus scabcr of Fabricius, Supplem. p. 407, 

 1798, appears to be identical, Fabricius having, he thinks, 

 been deceived as to the number of chelae both in this species 

 and in the species subsequently known as Nephrops 

 norivegicus. But this identification cannot be accepted. For 

 Astacus scabcr is described as having the rostrum short, 

 subulate, acute, the back of the carapace in front spinose 

 with two spines on each side larger and stronger than the 

 rest, and the wrist of the front chelipeds short. To these 

 distinctions must be added the fact that the habitat of the 

 species is not vSouth African but the Indian Ocean, and a 

 little weight may be given to the circumstance that the 

 author of the species assigns to it only a single pair of 

 filiform chelipeds in addition to the large front ones. The 

 account given by Fabricius is more easy to reconcile with 

 Herbst's Cancer niodesius, 1796, called Euirictiocliclcs modestus 

 by Wood-Mason in i8qs. 



