THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATUEAL HISTORY. 



[FIFTH SERIES.] 

 No. 10. OCTOBER 1878. 



XXXII. — On the Willemoesia Group of Crustacea. 

 By C. Spence Bate, F.R.Si* 



[Plate Xm.] 



Among the many objects of interest taken from tlie depths 

 of the ocean during the cruise of the ' Challenger,' there were 

 few that attracted more attention than the so-called blind 

 Crustacea. 



These were described by Mr. Willemoes-Suhm rather fully 

 both in ' Nature ' and in the * Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society,' — in the pages of the former under the name of Dei- 

 damia ; but in the latter Mr. Grote, having discovered that 

 this name had been in use for a genus of Sphingidaj, changed 

 it to Willemoesia^ in compliment to the unfortunate marine 

 zoologist of the expedition. 



Soon after it had been publislied it was recognized by those 

 who had given attention to the subject to resemble a small 

 crustacean that Dr. Heller had described among the " Crus- 

 taceen des siidlichen Europa," from a single male specimen 

 in the collection of the museum at Vienna, to which he gave 

 the name of Polycheles typhlops^ belonging to the same group. 

 I believe that I am correct in stating that Mr. Wood-Mason 

 was the first, in the ' Journal of the Asiatic Society ' for 1875, 

 to point out the resemblance between of Polycheles of Heller 

 and Willemoesia of the ' Challenger ' expedition. 



* Read at the Meeting of the British Afisociation at Dublin, on Mon- 

 day, Aug. 19, 1878. Communicated by the Author, 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. ii. 19 



