6682 



Crustacea. 



But in Crustacea there are two pairs of antennas ; the first, or 

 anterior pair, is that to which is attributed the sense of hearing ; the 

 posterior is supposed to have the power of smell. 



It would scarcely be fair to those who have not given much atten- 

 tion to the subject, and consequently take for granted the unproved 

 assertions of the writer, to let it be supposed that these opinions have 

 been and are universally adopted, — that the senses here given to the 

 antennas belong respectively to each. 



The subject was first introduced by Professor Milne-Edwards, who 

 attributed the sense of smell to the anterior pair of antennas, and that 

 of hearing to the posterior. This opinion, taken upon so great an* 

 authority, was universally accepted and taught by naturalists, until 

 Dr. Fane threw doubt upon it in a paper read before the Royal 

 Society in 1843, wherein he showed strong reasons for believing that 

 the opinion of Edwards should be reversed in relation to the lobster. 

 But here the subject hung fire. Few saw the paper of Dr. Farre, 

 and of those who did there were fewer still who cared to verify the 

 fact ; and so the old notion of naturalists still retained its place in 

 the works of those who wrote upon the subject. One who at the 

 age of twenty-three was elected fellow of the Royal Society, in his 

 capacity of assistant surgeon in the navy was attached as naturalist 

 to an expedition to the southern hemisphere, where, obtaining some 

 very transparent stomapod shrimps, he examined them with his 

 microscope while they were yet in a fresh state, and thought he 

 detected a strongly refracting otolithe in the basal joint of the upper 

 antennas, and stated it to be his opinion that the anterior pair was the 

 seat of the acoustic apparatus. This corroboration of Professor 

 Huxley's I have more recently traced in the crab, — the relation of 

 the senses to the respective antennas, — in a paper published in the 

 'Annals of Natural History' for 1855, in which I showed that there 

 existed an internal structure that bore no very distant analogy to the 

 cochlea in the mammalian ear. Thus observations in three persons 

 arrived independently at the same conclusion, and these in distinct 

 divisions of the same class. I think, therefore, we are not rash in 

 accepting the idea thus aimed at to be the truth, even though 

 so recently published a work as the f Conspectus' of Siebold adheres 

 to the opinion of Edwards ; but Siebold does not appear to have been 

 aware of the researches of Farre, Huxley, &c. 



But this is evidence upon structural grounds only, aided by induc- 

 tive reasoning. The vivarium is a modern instrument in Science, 

 that, when carefully watched and studied, will be found a valuable 



