ASTACUS. 147 



Under the name of Astacus fluvwtttis, Cammarus, or Gammarus, the older 

 authors included not only the " Edelkrebs," or the species to which the 

 name A. fluviatilis is now restricted, but also the " Steinkrebs," or "Thul- 

 krebs," a smaller form now known as A. torreniium. Indeed, it is probable that 

 these authors confounded A. torreniium and A. pallipes under the one name 

 "Steinkrebs."* As early as 1558 Gesner wrote : " Abundant Astaci fluvia- 

 tiles in Helveticis et alpinis regionibus, in mis, tluviis, torrentibus. lacubus. 

 Sunt autem duorum generum : alii nobiles cognominantur (Edelkrebs), ma- 

 jores nigrioresipie : alii Steinkrebs (id est saxatiles) et Thulkrebs (nescio 

 unde dicuntur) reperiuntur in rivis saxosis, minores, parte supina albiores, 

 prona nigriores; elixi non undiquaqne rubescunt, sed partim albicant."f 



Herbst (1796), in his account of Cancer -astacus, not only discriminates 

 between the Edelkrebs and the Steinkrebs, but mentions the large crayfish 

 from the Volga and the Jaik, afterwards described as a distinct species by 

 Eschscholtz under the name of A. leptodactylus.% 



In 1802 Schrank first separated the Steinkrebs and Edelkrebs as two 

 distinct species, Cancer torreniium and C.noUUs (Fauna Boica, p. 246). The 

 Russian A. leptodaciylus was first named and described as a distinct species in 

 1823, by Eschscholtz (Mem. Soc. Imper. Nat. Moscou, Tom. V. p. 109, Tab. 

 XVIII.). Fourteen years later, Milne Edwards, in the second volume of his 

 classical " Ilistoire Naturelle des Crustaces," describes but one species of 

 European Astacus (A. fluviidilk). He says, however: "II existe deux vari- 

 ety's de cette ecrevisse: dans l'une, le rostre se retrecit graduellement des sa 

 base, et ses dents laterales sont situees pres de son extremite ; dans 1' autre, 

 les bonis lateraux du rostre sont paralleles dans leur moitic poste'rieure, et 

 les dents laterales sont plus fortes et plus eloignees de son extremite." 

 The second so-called "variety" is A. fluviatilis. The first might be either 

 A. torreniium or A. pallipes, for anything in the description, but the figure 

 given by him in the Disciples' edition of Cuvier's Regne Animal is A. pal- 

 lipes, which seems to be commoner in France than A. torreniium. 



* Tlie figures of the European crayfish in the older writers down to Pennant, as far as t hoy can lie 

 determined, seem i" represent J., fluviatilis sensu strictiori. Pennant's "Crawfish" is apparently 

 lipes. Of the figures published in tin- sixteenth ami seventeenth centuries, those of Gesner and Mattioli, 

 ami Jonston's Tali 111 figs. '■>, .'i, i, an- tolerably good representations of I lie species. 



f Op. supra cit., p. 122. Cf. Udrovandi, Schonevelde, Rosel, U.c, etc. 



i ' i ''il .) "Dans les grands fleuves de la Russie asiatique, ids que le 



Don, le Volga, etc, il y a des forevisses d'une prodigieuse grandeur, qu'on ue p&che que pour avoir lenrs 

 pierres"; and on p. 40, under Astacus fluviatilis, " Se troave dans les riviires en Europe et en Asie." So 

 also Desmarest, op. cit., p. 211, 1825. 



