Report on the zoological collections made in the Indo-Pacific Ocean ...

CRUSTACEA. 231tralia (il/. du Boulaii). It is retained as a distiuct species by Kossmann,who unites, however, under the designation Th. prymna,several of the species regarded as distinct by A. M. -Edwards {vide'Zool. Rcis. roth. Meer. ' i. p. 17, 1877).70. Thalamita sima, M.-Edw.Small specimens are in the first collection from Port !Molle, obtainedbetween tide-marks (No. 103) and at 14 fms. (No. 93) ; andin the second collection, from Thursday Island, 3-4 fms. (Nos. 175,177), 4-5 fms. (No. 165), and Port Darwin, obtained on the beach(No. 176).In three very small specimens from Port Denison, Queensland,4 fms. (No. Ill), two of which are females with ova, the medianlobes of the front are sinuated, and the front thus appears very obscurely6-lobed. This is probably a peculiarity due to the small sizeof the specimens examined ; the breadth of the carapace of one ofthe females is barely 4 lines (8| millim.).Of this species there are specimens in the British-Museum collectionobtained between Cumberland Island and Point Slade and offCape Capricorn {J. MacfjiUivray^ H.M.S. 'Ilattlesnake') ; also fromMoreton liay and Port Jackson, and from Swan River (J^, B. Juices)and Shark Bay, W. Australia {B\ M. Rayner, H.M.S. 'Herald');also from New Zealand (jmrcJiased), and from the Indian Ocean{General Hardw'uTce), and Aku Sima, Japan {Gapt. H. G. St. John) ;besides others without special indication of locality. A. Milne-Edwards records it from New Caledonia. The specimens from theIndian Ocean have the chelipedes more distinctly tuberculated thanthe other examples in the collection, but cannot, I think, on thisaccount be separated, even as a distinct variety. Erom the Thcdamitaclicqdali, noticed below, T. sima is distinguished not only by themuch more acute lateral teeth of the carapace, the last of which israther more prominent than the rest, but also by the smoothersternum and by the well-developed spines of the palms of thechelipedes. In T. chapAali the last of the antero-lateral teeth is (ifany thing) smaller than the preceding tooth, and the palmar spinesare nearly obsolete *.* I may take this opportunity of noting that there is now in the collection ofthe British Museum a s])eciinen from Ceylon {E. W. II. Holdav-ortli) apparentlyreferable to this exceedingly rare Jhalamita, originally described froiri the BedSea, of which A. Milne-Edwards, when he published his Monograph of thePortunidaj (Arch. Mas. H. N. x. p. yiiO, 18()1), wrote:— " Cette espece paraitextremement rare, elle n'existo dans aucun Musee, soit de France, soit deAngleterre, soit de Hollande."This example is an adult male, and agrees very well with M.-Edwards'sdescription and Savigny's figure of T. chapfaH, except as regards the clielipedes,the arm of which is strigose, and the wrist and palm and fingers very closelyand distinctly granulated; the sternum is also finely sculptured. As someindications of granulations appear on the wrist of the left-hand chelipede inSavigny's figure, I do not venture to regard our specimen as distinct. Shouldfuture researches, however, demonstrate it to be so, it may be designated7'. Juildiwrn-ihi.