128 



P1NNOTHERIDJ5. 



marvellous, which no Baconian philosophy then existed to 

 correct, the relations of these little interesting parasites to 

 their gigantic hosts should have given rise to legends as 

 amusing as they were false ; and we find that Cicero and 

 Pliny and Oppian have, in various degrees, given currency 

 to the most erroneous notions. Aristotle, indeed, with 

 his accustomed accuracy, first, and alone amongst the 

 ancients, offered any correct ideas of their habits: but 

 even he states that the life of the protecting shell-fish de- 

 pends for its continuance on that of its little guest. The 

 absurdities of the other ancient authors whom I have 

 named, are only worthy of recital as examples of the 

 danger of trusting to the assertions and conclusions of those 

 who have no general principles to guide them, a danger 

 not even in the present enlightened age, altogether to be 

 neglected as chimerical. 



I have thought it necessary, on the most mature con- 

 sideration, to merge Pinnotheres Montagui of Leach as a 

 synonyme of this species, a result to which I am led by a 



careful examination of the single 

 specimen on which that species 

 was founded, and which is in 

 the British Museum. The sole 

 appreciable distinction between 

 them is the enlargement of the 

 last joint of the abdomen in P. 

 Montagui, a character which 

 probably depends on age ; the 

 individual in question is a male, and is a little larger than 

 the ordinary males of P. veterutn. Milne Edwards speaks 

 of the " female of P. Montagui ;^ being probably misled 

 by a cursory observation of the enlarged view of the male 

 in Leach's plate. 



