SYNOPSES OF NORTH-AMERICAN 

 INVERTEBRATES. 



XVIII. The Amphipoda. 1 



8. J. HOLMES. 



The present key is restricted to the species of amphipod 

 Crustacea of the Atlantic coast of North America. The amphi- 

 pod fauna of the Pacific coast is very imperfectly known and a 

 key to the forms already described would include only a small 

 proportion of the numerous species of that region. The species 

 from the Arctic regions of the American continent are also not 

 included. Most of these are circumpolar in their distribution 

 and only those are described which range into the region 

 covered. The majority of the known species of eastern North 

 America are, however, representatives of this circumpolar fauna 

 and are found also on the northern coast of Europe and Asia. 

 The amphipod fauna of Labrador is very similar to that of 

 Norway, the differences naturally becoming greater as we pass 

 southward along the shores of the two continents. Nevertheless 

 there are not a few species common to the Mediterranean and 

 the southern coast of New England. The tendency of some 

 writers to describe a species as new when met with for the first 

 time in North America has therefore resulted in the production 

 of many synonyms. 



While the labors of several English, German, Danish, and 

 Norwegian naturalists have made the amphipod fauna of Arctic 

 America fairly well known, we have almost no information con- 

 cerning the Amphipoda of the southern portion of our own coast. 

 The veteran American naturalist, Thomas Say, has described a 

 few species from the shores of the southern states, but no 

 successor has followed in his footsteps. Prof. Smith in the 

 important Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard 

 Sound by Smith and Verrill made a list of the Amphipoda of 

 southern New England and described several new species, and 



1 From the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 

 Mich. 



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