SUPPLEMENT 
ON 
THE CRUSTACEA. 
We shall insert here, after the text of Latreille on the Mala* 
costraca, our supplementary observations on the class in 
general, and also on that division in particular. 
All the animals of this class, as their name indicates, are 
covered with integuments of a crustaceous substance, more 
calcareous than that which envelopes the myriapods , the 
arachnida , and the insects. Most of them feed on bodies in 
a state of putrefaction, and in all the sexes are distinct. 
The ancients were very well acquainted with the division 
which we call malacostraca , which they placed between the 
mollusca and the fish. Aristotle has devoted a particular 
chapter to the species which were known to him. Athenaeus 
has given an enumeration of such as are edible, and Hippo- 
crates has noticed some which, in his opinion, may be usefully 
employed for medicinal purposes. 
Pliny has scarcely added any thing to the observations of 
Aristotle, and those who have since spoken of the Crustacea, 
such as Rondelct, Belon, Gesner, Aldrovandus, and Jonston, 
who also place them between the mollusca and the fish, have 
produced nothing which could throw any additional light on the 
natural history, or on the structure of this class of animals. 
The ancient naturalists, however, and even the modem, to 
the time of Linnaeus, perceived, as we have seen, the necessity 
of classing these animals separately. That great naturalist, 
however, united them to the insects, and having taken as the 
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