1888-89.] 103 



present members would be spared to take part in that anni- 

 versary. He then called attention to the principal objects 

 which had been lent for exhibition. 



Mr. W. Swanston, F.G.S., the senior secretary, made a 

 few remarks upon the table of specimens illustrating the 

 Crustacea. It has been usual, he said, on our opening meet- 

 ings to select some special subject for illustration. We have 

 had lime, silica, echinoderms recent and fossil, as well as other 

 groups. This year we have selected the class Crustacea. 

 This special subject had been suggested to us by the visit to 

 our shores of a very distinguished stranger, Lithodes Maia f 

 who was found aimlessly wandering about the Holywood banks 

 last summer. This gentleman, the Northern Stone-crab, of 

 whom there is no previous record (except a doubtful one in the 

 Dublin Museum) of any of his name having been met with on 

 Irish soil, was carried to our valued fellow-member, Mr. John 

 Marsh. This stranger's relatives are mostly connected with 

 warmer latitudes, but he himself hails from colder shores. He 

 has, however been recorded as having before this visited the 

 Isle of Man and the coast of Ayrshire. The family of Crus- 

 tacea generally find their largest development in the tropic and 

 sub -tropic seas, as was well indicated by the enormous claw 

 of a species of crab from China, exhibited by Mr. S. F. Milli- 

 gan, M.R.I.A. This claw alone must have contained several 

 pounds more meat than the whole body of one of those degene- 

 rate crustaceans that find their way to our markets. The place 

 of the Crustacea in the order of nature is rather a lowly one, 

 coming next below the spiders and the great insect family 

 generally. The Cirrhipeda, or barnacle shells, are the lowest 

 order of the family. The Entomostraca, a. microscopic group, 

 come next, and the Malacotrica, containing the well-known 

 crabs, are the highest. This last is the most important, and is 

 subdivided into two sections — first, the stalk-eyed, or those 

 with their eyes on good supports, a convenient arrangement, 

 enabling them to see well about them ; and, second, the sessile- 

 eyed, those whose eyes appear like black spots. On the table 



