288 



COLLECTIONS FROM MELANESIA. 



which differ from the specimen doubtfully referred to A. gracilipes, 

 from Capt. St. John's Corean collection, in the British Museum* 

 only in having the inferior margins of the merus-joint of the larger 

 chelipede distinctly serrated and its upper margin bluntly angulated 

 at the distal end, whereas in the Corean specimen the inferior mar- 

 gins are nearly smooth and the upper margin ends in a distinct 

 spine. A specimen from Ceylon (E. W. H. Holdsworth) is somewhat 

 intermediate in these characters. Nothing is said regarding the 

 form of this joint by Stimpson in his original description. I may 

 add that both the Japanese and Australian specimens differ from 

 Stimpson's description, founded on examples from Tahiti, in having 

 the first joint of the carpus a little shorter than the second. 



8. Alpheus minor, var. neptunus. 



Alpheus minus, Say, Journ. Acad. Nat. Sc. Philad. i. p. 245 (1818) ; 



M.-Edwards, Hist. Nat. Crust, ii. p. 35G ( l<-34) ; Be Kay, Zool. 



Neiv York Fauna, Crust, p. 26 (1844) ; White, List Crust. Brit. 



Mus. p. 75 (1847) ; Gibbes, Proc. Amer. Assoc. Advanc. Sei. p. 196 



(1851); Kmysley, Bull. U.S. Geol. Survey, p. 190 (1878). 

 P Alpheus formosus, Gibbes, t. c. p. 196 (1851). 

 Alpheus neptunus, Dana, U.S. Expl. Exp. xiii. Cr. i. p. 553, pi. xxxv. 



fig. 5 (1852) ; Stimpson, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. p. 31 (I860), 



var. 

 Alpheus charon, Heller, Sitz. Ahad. Wissenseh. Wien, xliv. i. p. 272, 



pi. iii. figs. 21, 22 (1862 J ; Crust, in Reise der Novara, p. 107 



(1865), var. 

 Alpheus minor, Lockinyton, Ann. § May. Nat. Hist. ser. 5, i. p. 472 



(1878). 



Three specimens, of which two are females with ova, were ob- 

 tained at Thursday Island, 4-5 fms. (No. 165). 



A small specimen is in the British-Museum collection from Port 

 Jackson, between Bell's Head and Goat Island (J. Brazier). 



To this species also are referred specimens from the Gulf of 

 Suez (R. MacAndrew), Karachi (Karachi Museum), and Ceylon 

 (E. W. H. Holdsivorth), besides three specimens presented by T. 

 Say, and therefore of typical value, from East Florida. 



Dana's types were from the Sooloo Sea, and Stimpson records it 

 from Ousima and Hong Kong. 



I can find nothing, either in the descriptions of authors or in the 

 specimens I have examined, to warrant the specific separation of the 

 Oriental from the American species. The ocular spines and rostrum 

 are, however, somewhat shorter and more triangulate in the Floridan 

 examples than in the Oriental form ; and as Kingsley notes a similar 

 distinction between specimens occurring on the Eastern and Western 

 American coasts, I retain Dana's name for the Oriental variety. On 

 the American coasts it is recorded by Kingsley from North Carolina 

 to the Bermudas on the east, and at Pearl Islands Bay, off Panama, 

 on the west. 



* Vide Troc. Zool. Soc. p. 55 (1879). 



