14 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Januaky, 1903. 



^ 



Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry. By ^f. M. 



Pattison Muir, ii.A. (Ncwnos.) Illustrated. Is. 

 Penrose's Pictorial Annual, l'.)02-3. (A. W. Penrose & Co.) 

 Symons's Meteorological Magazine, JiecembeT, 1902. (Stanford.) 



4(1. 



THE NOBODIES, ~A SEA-FARING FAMILY. 



By the Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing, m.a., f.e.s., v.p.i,.s , f.z.,s. 



CHAPTER V. 

 A MAN is said to pocket an affront wlien he demurely lets 

 it pass as thougb it had not been offered. The " uhela- 

 concealing " Cryptochelata have no poclcet-like cavities 

 within which to hide their nippers. They either let them 

 vanish altogether, or retain them like superannuated 

 dimples as an ineffective reminiscence of infancy. In 

 classification, however, these disestablished or disendowed 

 chelifori are still useful. They serve to discriminate three 

 families of this section. In the Ammotheidte they are 

 small, rudimentary, and, in contradiction to their "title, 

 not cheliferous. They are small also in the Eurycydidse, 

 but there imperfectly chelate. In the Colossendeidse they 

 are entirely wantint;-. It will not be forgotten that these 

 distinctions apply to the adults, the appendages in question 

 being, so far as is known, present and chelate in the young 

 of all the Pycnogonida. 



In the fir,5t of the three families above mentioned there 

 are several genera, exactly how many it is not easy to say, 

 because some that are imposing in name ai-e very obscure 

 in nature. Thus Oiceobathes. Hesse, "with its home in 

 the abyss," is perhaps the same as Ammothea. of which 

 two species have their home on our own shoi'es and shallows. 

 Pepliredo Mrsiita, described by Goodsir, from the German 

 Ocean, is thought by Hoek to be genericaliy the same as 

 Phavodeimis which Costa instituted earlier for species from 

 the Bay of Najiles. Clotenia, Dohrn, and Discoarachne, 

 Hoek, are, in the ojHnion of Dr. Hoek himself, closely 

 approximate. They were published in the same year, 1881. 

 Both authors date their work in the same month, Hoek 

 on May 19th, at Leiden, Dohrn on May 3Ist at Naples. 

 But although Dr. Hoek's "Challenger" report, as he 

 subsequently explained, was ready to appear at the 

 beginning of July, it was not actually issued till October, 

 whei-eas Dr. Dohrn's Neapolitan monograph was at the 

 service of the public in the preceding September. Bvit 

 the dates are perhaps not the only consideration. In 

 Clotenia we find the chelifori dwarfed each to a little 

 stum]) or tubercle. In Biscoarachne not even so much as 

 this is either mentioned or figured, so that the name must 

 not be cancelled as a synonym without demur. The 

 disappearance of these little vestigial stumps would 

 probably make no difference to the animal. Nature would 

 view it with unconcern. But the neat simplicity witli 

 which our three families have been discriminated will be 

 very much disfigured by it, for the total absence of the 

 chelifori is used as a mark of the third family, not of the 

 first. To put the matter, then, on a broader footing, some 

 supplementary characters of the Ammotheida3 may be 

 given. They have the second appendages from four- to 

 nine-jointed, the ovigerous legs seven- to ten-jointed with- 

 out claws, and the ambidatory legs provided with auxiliary 

 claws on the back of each principal claw or unguis. Of 

 the genera not hitherto mentioned, Parilxea, Philippi, 1813, 

 IS obscure. So is Platychehis, Costa, 1861, which has, 

 moreover, a preoccupied name. Tanystyltim, Miers, 1875, 

 takes its title from its tail, which is described as " a long 

 styliform process." Lecythorhyiichm, Bohm, 1879, is so 

 called from its "flask-shaped proboscis," while Oorhynchus, 

 Hoek, 1881, has the " proboscis egg-shaped." In the 

 latter year another new genus united the names of the last 



two authors, being called Bohmia by Hoek in honour of 

 Biihm. Whether Trygxus, Dohrn, 1881, is named "full 

 of lees " from the wine-coloured intestinal canal is a riddle 

 which its author le.ives for the ingenious to solve. Dr. 

 Dohrn, in 1884, regarded Ammothea, Phanodemus, 

 Pephredo, Pasithoe, Endeis, Pariboea, Platychelus, 

 Alcinous, Achelia, as nothing but names of a single 

 genus. It, has been already explained that the last is, in 

 fact, the adult f9rm of the first, but the rest are still 

 indeterminate, and of the species assigned to them it is 

 not certain that all belong to the same family. 



In place of Kroyer's Zetes, which was preoccupied, 

 Schiridte introduced the name Eitrycyde. The first half 

 of this means " broad," and is applicable to the type or 

 premier species of the genus, since the side processes of 

 its trunk-segments are unusually produced, and therefore 

 give a considerable total breadth to the body. But cyde 

 is not Greek for a " side," and in the less impossible sense 

 of " glory." the application remains a glorious uncertainty. 

 Be the full meaning of the name what it will, this is the 

 titular genus of the family Eurycydida'. With the 

 chelifori as already described, this family combines ten- 

 jointed second and eleven-jointed third appendages, the 

 terminal joint of the third being a claw. Auxiliary claws 



Ascorhync/ms glaber, Hoek. From Itook. 



are not found on the ambulatory legs. The proboscis lias 

 the remarkable habit of folding under the body. This 

 peculiarity has been further illustrated in earlier chapters 

 (pp. 75, 138 [1902]). It is also alluded to in the name 

 of Gnamptorhynchus, instituted by Bohm in 1879, as the 

 genus of " the bent beak," for a species from Japan. 

 Hoek proposes to make this a synonym of Ascorhyiichus, 

 Sars, 1876, a doubtful proceeding, since the species 

 described by Sars has the claw of the walking-legs 

 elongate, while the Japanese species is unique in having 

 no claw at all in the first pair of these limbs. Neverthe- 

 less, it must bo remembered that in two species of 



