Dr. J. Young on the Malacostraca of Aristotle. 259 



same passage with the Heracleotici, and has certainly neglected 

 the caution he himself rightly gives against the determination 

 of species from inexact data. He further regards the Pagurus 

 as Cancer pagurus. Other fancies it is needless to mention : 

 the long list of Brachyura given by Heller as occurring in the 

 Mediterranean is large enough to select from ; but, as there is 

 no reason for choosing one form more than another, the task is 

 not profitable. For, besides the enumeration above given and 

 the anatomical statements extracted in the previous part of this 

 paper, only one other passage contains any zoological informa- 

 tion regarding species (De Part. iv. 8). In that passage the 

 Maice and Heracleotici are said to be of sedentary habits, and 

 therefore having weak limbs, which in the former are thin, in 

 the latter short — characters not strictly applicable either to the 

 modern Maia, or to Amathia, the conjectured representative of the 

 Heracleotici. Meyer shrewdly points out that inquiry is arrested 

 by the preliminary difficulty of determining how far the groups 

 thus arranged in order of size represent natural divisions. In 

 this unsatisfactory conclusion we must perforce concur. Of 

 the smaller form we shall immediately speak. But first there 

 are some members of the division named but not referred to 

 any of the groups indicated by Aristotle. On the Phoenician 

 coast certain animals, called i7T7ret<? on account of their speed, 

 are referred by Milne-Edwards to Ocypoda, of which the species 

 0. cursor is found in the islands of the Archipelago. Another 

 animal (ap«To?) is once mentioned as similar in its reproduction 

 to Carabus; but, as it occurs nowhere else, its determination 

 is impossible : we cannot tell even what form it most nearly 

 resembled. 



It remains to speak of the smaller forms. These belong to 

 the Car-ides and Carcini. Whether the small form of the former 

 is referred to its place with the same generic precision as such 

 a statement would now imply, or whether it is merely equiva- 

 lent to saying that it is one of the Macrura, we have no means 

 of deciding. The comparison of some forms with Carabus, and 

 others (perhaps the same) with Astacus leaves an uncertainty, 

 not diminished by the repetitions occurring in the two chapters 

 in which they are spoken of at the greatest length (H. An. 

 iv. 2, 3). 



Three forms of the small Carcinus admit of identification, 

 namely that found in the shells of Strombi and that in those of 

 Nerita. The long antenna;, the fixed eyes directed anteriorly 

 and supported on long peduncles ; the shell, less dense than in 

 Carcinus, casing thorax and feet, while the hind body is soft, 

 are characteristic of the genus Pagurus; while the larger 

 right pincers and longer body of the inhabitant of Strombi 



17* 



