63 
Notes on the Madras species of Matufa. 
(By J. R. HENDERSON, M.B., F.L.S.) 
Among the many marine wonders drawn on shore in the 
nets of the Madras fishermen, few objects are more likely to 
attract the attention of the passer-by than the Crustaceans 
which form the subject of these notes. They are rendered 
conspicuous by very beautiful markings, a circular carapace 
with two lateral spines, and flattened swimming feet. The 
genus Matuta is eminently characteristic of the great Indo- 
Pacific region, to which indeed it is confined, the species 
occurring abundantly in shallow water throughout this area 
from the Red Sea to the coasts of Australia. At the same 
time there are few groups of Decapod Crustacea in which 
the determination of the species is a matter of greater 
difiiculty, or in which authorities have differed more as to the 
specific or varietal value of forms. A glance at the history of 
the genus will bear out this statement. 
In the second volume of his classical " Histoire Naturelle 
des Crustaces" (1837), Prof. H. Milne-Edwards admits but 
two species — M. actor, Fabr., and M. lunaris, Herbst. — those 
described by Leach and other writers he regards as merely 
varieties of one or other of the above. De Haan, in his 
great work on the Crustacea of Japan (1841), reduces the 
number to a single species — M. victor — and enumerates six 
varieties, without however assigning names to these ; practi- 
cally the same view is held by Prof. A. Milne-Edwards, ^ 
who refers all the previously described forms to M. victor. 
In 1876, Mr. E. J. Miers, with the rich collections of the 
Nouvelles Archives du Museum, X., p. 54 (1874). 
