618 "THETIS ■' SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. 



From a tube 18 mm. long a female was taken, measiu'iiig 6'75 

 mm. from rostrum to end of peraeon, the first antennfe with nine- 

 jointed flagellunij 4*25 mm. long. This specimen had a very 

 pointed rostrum and a faint carina along the middle of head and 

 body. To the tube were attached nine small tubes of about 3 mm. 

 length. This tube and some others were coated with fine grains 

 of sand, but there were some quite smooth. 



Localities. — Off Cape Three Points, 41 to 50 fathoms, tubes 

 perhaps empty ; Botany Bay, from depth of 50-52 fathoms. 



Genus S I P H O N CE C E T E S , A'royer. 



Siphonoeceles, Ivruyer, Natuihist. Tidsskrift, (2), i., 1845, pp. 481, 



491. 

 Siphonoecetes, Stebbing, Das Tierreich, xxi., 1906, pp. 681, 740. 



The known species of this genus make so near an approach one 

 to the other, that Professor Delia Valle in 1893 was contented 

 with Kroyer's S. ii/picits as a conmion name for the three northern 

 species, together with a form found in the Mediterranean. Mr. 

 A. 0. Walker, after describing *S'. orientalis, sp.nov,, in 1904^ 

 from the Indian Ocean, observes: — "The narrowness of the 

 hands of the gnathopods distinguishes this species from the 

 others, but I confess that I am inclined to agree with Delia 

 Valle^^ (Gamm. d. Golfo di Napoli, p. 362) that the points 

 of difference between S. ty2ncus, Kroyer, the original Arctic 

 species, S. colletti, Boeck, and *S'. juaZ/z'c/tis, Sars, are not greater 

 than can be accounted for by age, &c., so that both these 

 species, as well as the present one, might well be united to 

 S. ty2ncus"^^ This is a comfortable doctrine, indicating that one 

 section of the scientific world is growing weary of new species 

 although at the same time another section is eager to name sub- 

 species, varieties, and subvarieties. From Australian waters I 

 am venturing to describe a form which seems to me independent, 

 having a blunt rostrum, the ultimate joint of peduncle in the 

 large second antennas longer than the penultimate, and the ramus 

 of the third uropods not longer than broad. In this respect it 

 agrees only with S. sabatieri, Rouville, 1894, from which, how- 

 ever, it is distinguished by the first uropods, and with S. smithi- 

 mius, Rathbun, 1905 (a new name for S. I. Smith's preoccupied 

 S. cuspidatus, 1873), in which the rostrum is long, slender, acute, 

 and the last joint of peduncle in the second antennae decidedly 

 shorter than the preceding joint. It may be noticed that in S.- 

 orientalis, Walker, the flagellum of the first antennae is fourteen- 



11 Delia Valle— Fauna Flora Neapel, xx., 1893. 



1-2 Walker— Rep. Ceylon Pearl Oyster Fish., il., 1904, p. 294. 



