156 Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing on the 



XXII. — On the Isopod Genus Leptochelia. 

 By the Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, M.A., F.L.S. 



While recently exploring Dana's great Atlas of Crustacea 

 for certain objects, I found my attention arrested in passing 

 by the figures of his Leptochelia minuta. These drawings 

 and the text relating to them, as well as a still earlier account 

 in the ' American Journal of Science,' produced the painful 

 impression that, so long ago as 1849, the famous American 

 naturalist must have taken advantage of my inexperience in 

 such matters at that period to predescribe on his own account 

 my Dolichochelia Forresti. As he is unhappily beyond the 

 reach of any personal expostulations, I will only suggest that 

 the two points in which his account differs from mine may 

 safely be ignored. He draws a line by which the head is 

 marked off both dorsally and laterally from the large first 

 segment of the perason. But both the West-Indian specimens 

 described in the Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist, last montli and the 

 general character of the family Tanaidaj warrant the inference 

 that no such line existed, though, while the family character 

 was insufficiently known, its presence might well have been 

 thought necessary. In the next place, the first antennas are 

 said by Dana to have the " base " or peduncle four-jointed, 

 with the second joint the longest, from which it is clear that 

 he has taken the dilatation of the proximal end of the long 

 first joint as a separate joint. Kroyer, before him, had done 

 the same thing in a parallel case, and probably misled his 

 successor. There is good reason to know that, with speci- 

 mens only a tenth of an inch long, it was not difficult forty or 

 fifty years back to make such mistakes as these. 



Dana reports his specimen as coming " from among sea- 

 weed and small corals, Feejees, Island of Ovalau," and 

 further remarks : — " This species is Caprelloid in habit. It 

 was observed by the author attached by its hinder legs to 

 seaweed, and reaching out the long arms in different direc- 

 tions as if in search of prey." 



That a minute shallow-water organism like this Lepto- 

 chelia should as yet be recorded only from two localities so 

 extremely remote from one another as the Leeward Islands 

 and the Fijis is at first sight rather striking. But, however 

 the distribution may have been effected, probably the species 

 will be found to occur at many intermediate stations whenever 

 research is more generally directed than it has been hitherto 

 to the inconspicuous occupants of the coast-lines of the globe. 

 The exact character of Dana's genus has long remained 



