( 67 ) 



VII. — On the Structure of the Chondracanthus Lophii, with Observations on its 

 Larval Form. By Wm. Turner, MB. (Lond.), F.R.S.E., and H. S. Wilson, 

 M.D., Demonstrators of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. Plate III. 



(Read 20tli January 1862). 



The very curious Parasitic Crustacean, the structure and larval form of 

 which we propose to consider in the following communication, we obtained in 

 the month of August last, in considerable numbers, in the branchial pouches of 

 a Lophius piscatoriiis, which we captured at Whitby in Yorkshire. 



The attention of naturalists appears to have been first directed to this species 

 of Chondracanthus by Dr George Johnston, of Berwick, in a short paper, illus- 

 trated by drawings of its external form, which was published in Loudin's 

 Magazine of Natural History.* Very shortly afterwards the Danish naturalist 

 Kroyerj described the animal, and evidently being unaware of Johnston's brief 

 notice, applied to it the name of Chondracanthus gihhosus. Cuvier^ had, however, 

 in the Regno Animal, 1829, figured, though somewhat roughly, under the genus 

 Chondracanthus, an animal bearing a considerable resemblance to the form now 

 under consideration, but he did not apply to it any specific name. Rathke,§ in 

 1840, published the most complete account of the structure of the animal that 

 had up to that time been recorded. His description comprised the internal and 

 external anatomy of the female, and partially of the male. In the same year 

 Milne Edwards || placed, in his classification of the Crustacea, the species Cho7i- 

 dracanthus gihhosus of Kroyer, along with the Chondracanthus Delarochiana, a 

 species found by De la Roche on the Tunny, and with these he classed the 

 Lernentoma Dufresnii of De Blainville. In 1847 Mr W. Thompson^ stated that 

 he had obtained this parasite from specimens of the Lophius caught in Dublin 

 and Belfast Bays in 1839 and 1841. Van Beneden,** in 1851, gave a brief 



* 1836. Vol. ix. p. 81. Paper dated December 23d, 1835. 



t Natur. Tidskrift, p. 252, bd. i. Hef. iii. 1836. Oken's Isis, 1840, p. 738. 



+ Vol. V. pi. 15, fig. 3. 



§ Beitrage sur Fauna Norwegens. Nov Act., vol. xx., 1843. 



II Hist. Nat. des Crustaces, vol. iii. p. 499. 



*If Annals of Nat. Hist., vol. xx. p. 248. 



** Recherches sur quelques Crustaces Inferieurs. Ann. des Sciences Nat., 1851, p. 104. 



vol. xxm. part l t 



