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



than in Carabus, but the rostrum is larger; the smooth surface 

 and larger body also distinguish it from that animal. 



Heller (Die Crust, des Siid. Europa, 1863) mentions, besides 

 the Mediterranean forms Homarus and Nephrops, seven species 

 of freshwater Astaci, to one or more of which Aristotle probably 

 alludes when he speaks of fluviatile forms of this genus. Were 

 our knowledge of the zoology of southern Europe as minute as 

 we could desire, it would be impossible to speak positively on 

 this and other questions of identification without some certainty 

 as to the locality where Aristotle's observations were chiefly 

 made, whether at Athens or in Macedonia, and as to the possi- 

 bility of species being brought from distant countries. To spe- 

 culate upon the particular forms which may be included under 

 the general names he uses is therefore simply to waste time. 



Carabus. — The diagnosis given under Astacus contains all the 

 data upon which an identification of this form can be founded. 

 But one point is especially of interest. The opening statement 

 that Astacus and Carabus have not pincers is in direct contradic- 

 tion to many subsequent passages in the ' History of Animals ' 

 and in ' De Partibus/ in which the pincers of the latter animal 

 are taken for granted and their uses described. The first con- 

 tradiction occurs in the same chapter, a few lines further on, 

 where the didactyle first pair of the female is her sexual distinc- 

 tion. At the same time the male has on the last pair spurs 

 larger and rougher than those of the female. To reconcile these 

 conflicting statements is impossible, without unwarrantable in- 

 terference with the text. Meyer's suggestion is both critically 

 sounder and more in keeping with the laxity so common in 

 Aristotle's descriptions. He finds ^' the rough spiny carapace, 

 the short rostrum, the large lateral and the shorter inner an- 

 tennae, the large eyes, the five swimming-plates of the telson, 

 the large false feet of the female, and the red ova '' characters 

 sufficiently marked to justify their acceptance as descriptive of 

 Palinurus vulgaris. The contradictions as to the pincers he 

 holds as proofs that Aristotle was acquainted with other forms, 

 but has neither named nor described them, save in these inci- 

 dental puzzling allusions. The great length of the third pair 

 in P. vulgaris might have been expected to require some notice. 

 Again, in the allied genus Scyllarus it is the last pair, not the 

 first, which is didactyle in the female. The development of the 

 spurs is therefore sexually the reverse of that stated in the text. 

 But in Scyllarus the oostegites show the decrease posteriorly 

 which, according to the lection I have adopted, is asserted in 

 the description of the auxiliaries to oviposition. In S. latus, 

 moreover, the spines there mentioned on the lateral parts of the 

 abdominal somites are well marked. If then we confine our 



