THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FIFTH SERIES.] 



" perlitora spargite museum, 



Naiades, et cireum vitreos considite fontes: 

 Polliee virgineo teneros hie carpite flores : 

 Floribus et pietum, divee, replete canistrum. 

 At vos, o Nymphse Craterides, ite sub undas ; 

 Ite, recurvato variata corallia trunco 

 Vellite muscosis e rupibus, et mihi conchas 

 Ferte, Deae pelagi, et pingui conchylia succo." 



N. Partheiiii Giannellnsii Eel. 1. 



No. 25. JANUARY 1880. 



I.— On the Squillidfe. By Edward J. Miers, F.L.S., F.Z.S., 



Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum. 



[Plates I.-HL] 



In the present revision of the genera and species of the 

 Squillidse (a group which, in the most recent systems of clas- 

 sification, constitutes the single family of the Stomatopoda) I 

 have not included the numerous pelagic forms which were 

 formerly assigned to several distinct genera (i. e. En'chthus, 

 Alima, Squillenchthics, &c.) in the family Erichthidre, but 

 were demonstrated by Fritz Miiller* to be but the larval con- 

 dition of the adult Stomatopod, and whose successive stages 

 of development have been so ably investigated and illustrated 

 by Dr. Clausf. In the present paper I have restricted myself 

 to the description of such forms as are undoubtedly adult, and 

 have endeavoured to facilitate their determination by brief 

 comparative descriptions of the several genera and species, 

 supplemented by notes on their geographical distribution, 

 based on the materials afforded by the collection of the British 

 Museum. It would seem that a revision of this kind is much 



* Vide Miiller, Arch. f. Nat. 1862, p. 353, 1863, p. 1 ; * Fur Darwin,' 

 English translation by Dallas, p. 67 (1869). 



t " Die Metamorphose der Squilliden," in Abhandl. konig. Gesellsch. 

 zu Gottingen, xvi. p. Ill (1872). 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. v. 1 



