H. Woodward's Report on Fossil Crustacea. 567 



Adams, F.R.S., to examine and describe a series of Crustacean 

 remains from the Miocene of Malta, collected by him in that island, I 

 have done so, and find them to include Scylla, Ranina, Portumtes, Maia, 

 Atergatis, and perhaps Neptunus. The iScylla agrees specifically with 

 the Scylla serrata found in the Indian seas of to-day and in the 

 Tertiaries of the Philippine Islands. This is one of the species of 

 fossil crabs so largely imported into China as " Medicine-Crabs" 

 (see Mr. D. Hanbury's papers read before the Pharmaceutical Society, 

 and published in their Journal, February, 1862, et seq.). 



The Banina is distinct from any recorded species, and I have 

 therefore to propose for it a specific name. I dedicate it to its dis- 

 coverer (B. Adamsi). 



The occurrence of these Eastern forms, with the remarkable 

 Echinoderms of Asiatic type, in Malta, clearly indicate the former 

 extension of an Indian Fauna as far east as the Mediterranean, if 

 not to our own shores. 



Whilst still pursuing the subject of the structure of the Tribolites, 

 no new facts have been collected, but much has been done in the 

 examination of larval Limulus, the substance of which I have sum- 

 marized in a paper read in December last before the Geological 

 Society. (See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1872, vol. xxviii., p. 46.) 



Dr. Anton Dohrn, without (as I think) any very clear reason, 

 proposes to separate the Xiphostjra and the Eurypterida, and also 

 the Trilobita, from the Crustacea, on the ground that they do 

 not, so far as we are at present aware, pass through a Nauplius stage, 

 but the young are like the parents save in the fewer number of their 

 somites. He is, however, unprepared to say they are Arachnides, 

 so that he can only place them in a group intermediate between the 

 Arachnida and Crustacea (the Gigantostraka of Heckel). Against 

 this course I have protested on the grounds that if we take away the 

 Trilobita from the pedigree of the Crustacea, one of the main argu- 

 ments in favour of evolution to be derived from this class, so far 

 from being strengthened, is destroyed. From what are the Crustacea 

 of to-day derived ? Are we to assume that they are all descended 

 from the Phyllopods and Ostracods, the only two remaining orders 

 whose life-history is conterminous with that of the Trilobita ? Or 

 are we to assume that the Arachnida are the older class ? " If," as 

 Fritz Miiller well observes, " all the classes of the Arthropoda 

 (Crustacea, Insecta, Myriopoda, and Arachnida) are indeed all 

 branches of a common stem (and of this there can scarcely be a 

 doubt), it is evident that the water-inhabiting and water-breathing 

 Crustacea must be regarded as the original stem from which the 

 other (terrestrial) classes, with their tracheal respiration, have 

 branched off." ("Facts and Arguments for Darsvin," p. 120). 



The accompanying Table is merely intended as an attempt roughly 

 to indicate (according to our present knowledge of the earliest 

 appearance in time of the several orders of Crustacea) the most 

 probable manner in which the various groups were evolved from a 

 common pre-Cambrian parent-stock, I have specially distinguished 

 those which are merely persistent types, but incapable of modifica- 



