230 Proceedings of the lloycd Phifsical Society. 



XVII. The Higher Grustcicea of the Scottish 

 Carloniferous Rocks. 



On Monday, 23r(l October 1905, B. :N'. Peach, Esq., LL.D., 

 F.E.S., delivered an Address on the above subject, of which 

 the following is an abstract: — 



The Scottish Carboniferous rocks yield abundant remains 

 of the higher Crustacea. Some of them belong to forms like 

 the recent Nebalia, the unspecialised structure of which shows 

 that it lies at the base of the genealogical tree of the higher 

 Crustacea. Most of the forms, however, belong to the 

 more advanced order of the Schizopoda, generally known 

 as the Opossum-Shrimps, three of the families being well 

 represented. Other forms, intermediate between these and 

 the modern squillas, sand-hoppers, and wood-lice, are also 

 comparatively numerous. None of the highest Crustacea, 

 such as shrimps, prawns, crayfish, lobsters, and crabs, have 

 been met with, nor have they been recorded from Carboni- 

 ferous strata in any part of the globe. It is, therefore, only 

 natural to infer that they had not come into existence in 

 Carboniferous times, but that they were subsequently 

 evolved from the Euphausiidse, a family of Opossum- 

 Shrimps well represented in the Carboniferous rocks. The 

 nature of the deposit in which the above occurs, as well 

 as that of their associated fossils, shows that they lived 

 along the ancient shores. Their modern immediate con- 

 geners, on the contrary, inhabit the open ocean, either 

 swimming near its surface or crawling at the bottom of its 

 abysses, where they had evidently been driven by the 

 severe struggle for existence w^hich goes on inshore. One 

 very anomalous creature, Anaspicles, the only surviving 

 genus of a family common enough in Carboniferous time, 

 turned up a few years ago in a fresh-water pool on Mount 

 Wellington, in Tasmania, and added another old-world 

 form to the Archaic fauna and flora which is known to 

 exist on that island and in Australia. 



