1 76 CRUSTACEA MALACOSTRACA. III. 



tant, some among them even voluminous, containing numerous descriptions of new or imperfectly 

 known forms. All authors have adopted my classification, excepting Harriet Richardson as to a single 

 genus to be mentioned presently. But I may perhaps insert here some remarks on the very few facts 

 pointed out since 1905 as being of some significance for the classification, for the diagnoses of the 

 family, of the sub-families, or of two of the sections of the group Sphserominse platybranchiatse. 



One of the most important of the papers mentioned is E. G. Racovitza: Spheromiens (Premiere 

 Serie) et Revision des Monolistrini, in Arch. Zool. Experim. 5. Ser. Vol. IV, 1910, p. 625 — 758, Pis. 

 XVIII — XXXI. It is mentioned because the author has discovered four plates of marsupial lamellse 

 in the section Monolistrini, the first pair originating at the base of first pair of legs. I had said that 

 the family possessed three pairs of these plates, and most of the forms of the family possess only this 

 number, but in Bathycopea Tatt. [Ancinella H. J. H.) I have now found a quite small pair at the first 

 pair of legs, thus, four pairs in all. That some genera of Sphseromidse possess four pairs of marsupial 

 lamellae is really interesting and is, I think, the only correction of any importance to be made in my 

 diagnosis of the family, while nothing is to be altered in my diagnoses of the three subfamilies. 



In the diagnosis of the group Sphserominse platybranchiatse I said that the exopods of fourth 

 and fifth pairs of pleopods are uujointed, but I ought to have said that in the fourth pair the exopod 

 is most frequently, and in the fifth pair always, uujointed. The discovery is due to Racovitza, but 

 when he wrote that my diagnosis of that group "doit etre modifiee sur le point suivant pour s'appli- 

 quer aux Monolistrini: Exopodites des pleopodes IV toujours avec articulation tres nette, quoique 

 souvent incomplete", he goes much too far, as he ought to have written that in one of the four sec- 

 tions, the Monolistrini, of that group the exopod in question is divided as he pronounced. — Finally, 

 according to Racovitza the word "sometimes" shall be inserted in the diagnosis of the section Mono- 

 listrini in the sentence: "second pair [of legs] in the male terminating in a prehensile hand". 



In my diagnosis of another section, the Ancinini, of the Sphserominse platybranchiatse the 

 sentence "Mandibles without masticatory process" must be altered in the following way: Mandibles 

 with the masticatory process reduced, very slender, nearly spine-shaped (see later on in the description 

 of Bathycopea). Of the very interesting genus Ancinus M.-Edw. I had seen only an exsiccated speci- 

 men of A. dcpressus Say in the British Museum ; I had examined its external features, but could not 

 study the pleopods. In 1909 Harriet Richardson published a paper on Ancinus dcpressus, basing it 

 on a female preserved in spirit. The authoress found that, while second pair of pleopods are biramous 

 - as in other Sphseroniidse — the first pair consist of "a single branch furnished with long hairs"; 

 the figure showing "first and second pleopod" is certainly not good, but I think that the statement, 

 that first pleopods have only a single branch, is correct. But when the authoress thinks this character 

 sufficient for separating Ancinus from the Sphseromidse and therefore establishes it as the type for a 

 family, the Anciniidse, certainly extremely few Zoologists will adopt this unhappy view. A footnote 

 in her paper (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. Vol. XXXVI, p. 173 — 177) runs as follows: "I prefer to retain An- 

 cinus as the type and only genus of the family Anciniidcr, but those who desire to follow the classi- 

 fication of Hansen may accept the name Spha-ro/uino' colobranchiatar for a fourth group to include this 

 form". But as Ancinus is closely allied to Bathycopea Tatt. and Tecticeps Richardson in every other 

 feature of any importance, all sound classification must arrange Ancinus together with these genera 



