TALITRUS. 
15 
There can be little doubt that, under the name 
Cancer locusta, the great Swede grouped more than 
one species. Hence the difficulty of determining the 
specific name entitled to priority of publication — (if 
this difficulty exists with Linnaeus, how much greater it 
must he with earlier writers !) — a circumstance which 
accounts for the discrepancies of opinion among later 
authors, some attributing the name to a species of Gam- 
mar us, and others to one of Talitrus. For our part we 
think that Linnaeus included species of both genera, but 
certainly Talitrus was one ; he says that it is entirely 
of a blue colour, that the hands of the two fore pairs of 
legs are adactyle, and hence that there are seven pairs of 
slender feet, and that he had seen it “ ad montem Thors- 
burg, in mari juxta Gotlandiam.” On the other hand, 
he refers to Roesel’s figure of the fresh-water Gammarus, 
and adds that the tail is trifoliated, “intermedio subulato.” 
His disciple Fabricius has added to the confusion by 
giving the Linnaean character of the legs, but adding that 
the tail was furnished with bifid spines, with the locality 
“in Europse maritimis frequentissimus dorso innatans, 
etiam ssepe in fontibus et fossis stagnantibus thus 
comprising at least three species with different habits. 
Under these circumstances, and in order to avoid the 
confusion arising from the same specific name having 
been also applied to the common shore species of Gam- 
marus, it might have been correct to have retained for 
the species of Talitrus the name of Saltatrix, given to it 
by Klein, and adopted by Montagu and Milne-Edwards ; 
but since Turton, in his translation of the “ Systema 
Naturae,” as early as 1806, used the specific name which 
most English authors have employed, we consider that 
we are justified in- continuing it. 
