A SYNOPSIS OF THE 
CRUSTACEA AND ECHINODERMATA 
OF THE 
UPPER TERTIARIES. 
With the exception of a very few species, which occur in 
some numbers, the organisms given in the following lists are 
rarely met with, and then usually in a more or less imperfect 
state of preservation, the Crustacea appearing as odd members 
and portions of the carapace, or in the chitinous remains of the 
exoderm, the Starfishes as fragments of the rays, and the 
Echini by plates and spines, except some in the quieter silts 
of the Coralline Crag, Suffolk, and the muddy estuarine clays 
of N. Ireland. It is therefore hardly to he wondered at that so 
little has been achieved in the elucidation of these faunas, and 
their occurrence and distribution in the later Tertiaries. 
Patient research and the determination of the species of “ Crab 
Claws ” so often met with in lists of fossils, ample enough 
otherwise where mollusca are concerned will, however, do 
much in this direction, as out of 80—90 species of the hard- 
shelled decapodous crastacea known to Britain, 20 species 
have been determined in a fossil state, of which number more 
than half are known from single examples, mostly fragmentary, 
chiefly chelae or claws. 
As a rule the most perfect examples are the shore crabs and 
those species inhabiting the laminarian or bryozoan zones of 
the Coralline Crags, where the sands and banks w T ere not 
much disturbed when deposited. The swimming crabs are 
usually represented by separated fingers or limb joints (speci¬ 
mens of the carapace rarely occurring in either of these deposits) 
and commoner in the Scottish pleistocene beds or in the 
estuarine clays of N E. Ireland than in the earlier Crags. 
The Lobster group is but feebly represented. I have only 
been able to note from my own observations the fragments of 
a large claw, in the drifts of Kiliiney Bay, Dublin, and its 
remains in sundry Scotch middens are the only other records Af 
