INTRODUCTION. 



As is well known, our earliest knowledge of Australian 

 fresh-water Entomostraca is due to the Rev. R. L. King, 

 who in the «Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society 

 of Van Diemen^s Land» has published some interesting 

 treatises on that part of the fauna. His investigations were 

 chiefly restricted to the environs of Sydney, and showed 

 indeed that part of the country to be rather rich in Ento- 

 mostraca, some of which exhibited a very close relationship 

 to well-known European species, though the greater number of 

 them were regarded as specifically distinct. As the descrip- 

 tions and figures given by Mr. King do not always admit 

 of our fully recognizing the species, I was very anxious to 

 obtain some of the native forms for a closer examinination, 

 and for this purpose applied to two well-known natura- 

 lists of the country, Prof. Ramsay and Mr. Th. Whitelegge. 

 Both these gentlemen readily complied with my request, 

 and furnished me with a rather interesting material, the 

 working out of which has been of great interest to me. In 

 1888, Prof. Ramsay kindly sent me a tube containing a 

 sample taken from the Waterloo swamps near Sydney, 

 and in the succeeding year, I published in the Transactions 



