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LYNCEUS AND THE LYNCEIDM. 



By the Rev. Thomas R. R. Stebbing, M.A., F.R.S., 

 F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



In recent years a great impulse has been given to the study 

 of Crustacea by the numerous expeditions sent out more or less 

 expressly for the purpose of deep-sea exploration. As the result 

 of voyages carried out in rapid succession through the last forty 

 years, a host of forms distinguished for novelty, queerness, or 

 beauty have contributed interest and animation to the pursuits 

 of the carcinologist. The species popularly attractive have for 

 the most part, though by no means exclusively, belonged to the 

 Malacostraca. But during the same period in which the higher 

 marine Crustacea have been thus decidedly making their*mark, 

 it happens that in a quite opposite direction the fresh-water 

 Entomostraca have found their way to a modest celebrity. 

 Though not many of them are of any considerable size, they 

 attain in various ways to economic importance by their astonish- 

 ing abundance. Of those that can be easily captured in almost 

 any pond or ditch the variety is very considerable, and the num- 

 ber of species obtainable can be largely increased by a little extra 

 exertion, without any appeal to imperial resources. Apart from 

 ordinary methods of fishing for them at the sides or in the centre 

 of pools and watercourses, that which more than anything else 

 stands in antithesis to the costly labour of dredging and trawling 

 in submarine abysses is the process, applicable at least to many 

 fresh-water Entomostraca, of dredging on dry land. Many sheets 

 of water at certain seasons completely evaporate, and expose a 

 moistureless floor. If earth be taken from this and placed in 

 water, under suitable circumstances of temperature, there is a 

 good prospect that a crop of Entomostraca will be raised from it. 

 The secret is that crustacean eggs have been deposited in the 

 soil, and have there been biding their time till conditions appro - 



