8 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Genus PARALOPHOGASTER Hansen 



3. PARALOPHOGASTER GLABER Hansen 



Paralophogaster glaber Hansen, 1910, p. 16, pi. 1, figs. 2a-2n. — Tattersall, 



1923, p. 279. 



Occurrence 



Length 



Mvi. 



Remarks. — This is the most interesting of the species in the present 

 collection. The type specimens were described from the Sihoga 

 collections made in the waters around the East Indies and I have 

 since recorded the species from the waters off New Zealand. Its 

 capture, therefore, by the Bache in the waters of the western North 

 Atlantic must be regarded as one of the most important results of 

 that expedition. In spite of the wide separation in the geographical 

 position of the localities of capture, I can find no reasonable ground 

 for separating the Atlantic specimens from the East Indian and New 

 Zealand species. Such points of difference as I have been able to 

 discover may be summarized as follows: (1) The rostral plate is more 

 distinctly tridentate than shown by Hansen, with the lateral teeth 

 more prominent and more on a level with the median tooth; (2) the 

 antennal scale is apparently slightly shorter in my specimens than 

 as described and figured by Hansen. It is only three and a half times 

 as long as broad and projects beyond the distal end of the antennular 

 peduncle for only one-third of its length. In Hansen's specimens the 

 scale was four times as long as broad and extended beyond the 

 antennular peduncle for one-half of its length; (3) the telson has only 

 three short and two long spines on each margin, with only three 

 spinules between the two large spines. In Hansen's specimens there 

 were four short and two long spines and six or seven spinules between 

 the long spines. 



The Bache specimens are all immature and this fact may account 

 for some, at any rate, of these differences, more particularly the last 

 one. The agreement, almost to the most minute detail, however, 

 between the appendages of the west Atlantic specimens and those 

 described by Hansen, is so very striking and the differences noted 

 above are so much more of degree than of actual form, that I feel 

 compelled, for the present at any rate, to regard the East Indian and 

 west Atlantic specimens as belonging to one widely distributed 

 species. 



Distribution. — East Indian Seas (Hansen); off New Zealand 

 (Tatters all). 



