1895.] 
A. Alcock — Carcinological Fauna of Lidia. 
157 
Materials for a Carcinological Fauna of India. No. 1. The Brachyura 
Oxyrhyncha. — By A. Alcock, M.B., C.M.Z.S., Superintendent of the 
Indian Museum. 
Plates III-V. 
[Received 11th. April: — Read 1st May.] 
It was the intention of my immediate predecessor and late friend 
James Wood-Mason to write a Descriptive Catalogue of the collection 
of Crustacea in the Indian Museufri. 
To this end he had collected a very comprehensive Crustacean 
literature, and had set in motion a scheme for extracting in a handy 
form the references contained therein. 
He had also roughly sorted the whole collection into its component 
great-groups, and had made a large number of identifications. 
In short he had, before his sad and premature death, collected the 
raw material for, and sketched the broad foundations of, a work that, 
had he lived on in unimpaired health, might have been a fit companion 
and sequel to the classical volumes of that great naturalist Henri 
Milne-Edwards. 
Only in the case of the Stomapoda had he gone further than this ; 
and I am now preparing to edit, from the rough MS. notes at my 
disposal, his account of a part of this Order as represented in the 
collection of the Indian Museum. 
The present paper is the first of a series in which I hope to be 
able to turn to some — though inadequate — account the mass of 
material accumulated by my predecessor. 
My own work in this paper has been to complete, to arrange 
systematically, to collate, and to verify the available references to the 
literature of the Oxyrhyncha; to determine about 70 per cent, of the 
Indian species contained in the collection of the Indian Museum ; to 
prepare the generic diagnoses and the descriptions of all the species 
mentioned; and to work out, to the best of my ability, keys—which I 
hope may be of use to naturalists in India — to sub-families, genera, 
and species. 
In the arrangement of the group as a whole, I have been guided 
and assisted by the Revision of the Maioid Crustacea , by Mr. E.'J. Miers, 
