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C R U S T A C E A .
BY
E. J . MIERS.
The Crustacea coUected by Dr. R. Coppinger on the north-western,
northern, and north-eastern coasts of Australia are very numerous
and are interesting not only on account of the large number of new
or rare species obtained, but also on account of the careful manner
in which in nearly every instance the nature of the sea-bottom and
depth of water &c. was recorded.
Until the publication of Mr. W. A. Haswell’s comprehensive work
on the Podophthalmions and Edriophthalmious Crustacea of Australia
*, but few systematists had dealt specially with this department
of the fauna of this district.
To the Australian species enumerated by Milne-Edwards in his
great w o rk t, numerous additions were, however, made by Prof. J.
D. Dana in the Report on the Crustacea collected by the United
States Exploring Expedition under Commodore Wilkes J, these
being, with few exceptions, from the coast of New South AVales.
In 1856 Dr. J. R. Kinahan § puhhshed an account of a small
collection of marine Decapoda collected by himself at Port Phillip,
Victoria; and in 1865 Dr. Hess || gave a systematic account of the
then known species of Decapoda of Eastern Australia, based upon
the work of previous authors and a collection from Sydney in the
Museum of Göttingen.
In the same year appeared the Report by Prof. Camil Heller on
the Crustacea collected by the Austrian frigate ‘ Novara’1 , wherein
twenty-four species are enumerated, also from Sydney. Reference
may also here be made to an account of the Astacidæ of Australia
(“ Ueberblick der neuholländischen Flusskrebse”) by Dr. von
Mr. Haswell’s recently published and very useful Catalogue,
which was not received until this Report was considerably advanced,
* ‘ Catalogue of the Australian Stalk- and Sessile-eyed Crustacea.’ Sydney,
1882
t ‘Histoire Naturelle des Crustacés’ (183+40).
i United States Exploring Expedition, vols. xiii. & xiv., Crustacea (1852-53).
§ Journal of the Eoyal Dublin Society, vol. i. pt. 3, p. 111 (1856).
Il Archiv f. Naturgeschichte, xxxi. p. 127 (1865).
•f ‘ Eeise der österreichischen Fregatte Novara,’ Crustaceen (1865).
** Monatsbericht der Akad. Wissensch. Berlin, p. 615 (1868).
CPvTJSTACEA. 179
contains not only the results of his own previous researches on the
Australian Stalk- and Sessile-eyed Crustacea (which are to be found
in a series of papers communicated to the Linnean Society of New
South Wales *, wherein a very considerable number of species new
to science are described and illustrated), but also gathers into a form
convenient for reference nearly all the work of earlier authors—not
merely what is contained in the special memoirs referred to above,
but also the numerous Australian species described and incidentally
noticed in the publications of A. AVhite, Spence Rate, A. Milne-
Edwards, and others, or in my own papers.
In this Catalogue no fewer than o40 species of Podophthalmions
and Edriophthalmious Crustacea are described; but, large as this
number may appear, it is necessarily very far from being a complete
enumeration of the Stalk- and Sessile-eyed Crustacea of this great
contiuent, which presents in its different regions such diverse conditions
of temperature and climate. This will appear from the
large number of species described in the following pages, which are
either new to science or not included in the ‘ Catalogue’ ; and I
may add that, had time and opportunity allowed, it would have
been possible to largely add to the list of unrecorded Australian
species from the rich material accumulated in the National Collection
alone.
In the present memoir 203 species and well-marked varieties of
Crustacea and Pycnogonida are enumerated from the Australian
seas, besides several which are described or incidentally referred to,
hut which do not belong to the Australian fauna. Eorty-five new
or nndescribed species and ten varieties are described for the first
tim e ; while of the total number (193 in all) of species and varieties
of Australian Podophthalmia and Edriophthalmia noticed in the
foUowing pages, ninety-six are not included in Mr. Haswell’s catalogue.
Among the species described as new are several to which
AVhite applied specific names but never characterized; these names
have been, of course, adopted. Besides the new species, several
hitherto very imperfectly known from the existing descriptions (aud
therefore only to be identified with some uncertainty) have been
redescribed and iUustrated.
Geographical Distribution.—As regards the geographical range of
the species, I have not thought it necessary (nor, indeed, would it
be possible within the limits of this Report) to give all the hitherto
recorded localities, many of them being common and widely-ranging
Oriental forms which occur (or may occur) on every coast-line
within the wide Indo-Pacific or Oriental region. Eull particulars,
however, are given of the Australian localities, and many are now
for the first time recorded on the authority of specimens in the
British-Museum collection obtained by the uaturahsts of H.M.SS.
‘ Rattlesnake’ and ‘Herald,’ and by the late Messrs. Dring, J. R.
Jukes, and other gentlemen, by whose zeal and discrimination
our National Collection has so greatly benefited. In the case
* Journal of the Linnean Society of N. S. Wales, iii.-vi. (1879-82).
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