550 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The larvae are very delicate and difficult to rear in 

 confinement, but one can get every stage in abundance 

 in the plankton at Port Erin. The eggs remain on the 

 pleopods until hatching time. The little Hermit Crab 

 is now in the Protozoea stage, but the first ecdysis is 

 accomplished as the larva quits the egg capsule, so the 

 first free stage is in the form of a Zoea. To set the 

 larvae free, the mother sits partly out of her shell and 

 wipes the pleopods gently with the brush of setae on 

 her last pereiopod to facilitate their escape. The same 

 appendage serves to remove the husks from the pleopodal 

 setae when the hatching is over. 



A berried crab often exposes her eggs when her 

 surroundings are peaceful, and fans them slowly up and 

 down in the water by moving her pleopods. At an 

 average the mother crab has about twelve to fifteen 

 thousand eggs attached to her abdominal limbs at one 

 time. Only a brief summary of the post-embryonic 

 development can be given here ; a detailed account of the 

 American species E. longicarpus — which seems to agree 

 in all particulars with ours — is given by M. T. 

 Thompson.* 



Six larval stages can be distinguished in the course 

 of the development, four Zoea stages, a Glaucothoe, and 

 a group of adolescent stages. The Zoeas of Eupa gurus are 

 very characteristic and can be picked out by the unaided 

 eye in a miscellaneous assemblage of small Crustacea by 

 their shape alone. The carapace is large and free from 

 carinae or spines. It is excavated, not deeply, at the 

 back, and as a result there are two latero-posterior, 

 prominent pointed projections, which, however, are never 

 prolonged into spines. 



* Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. XXXI., No. 4, p. 147. 



