Page:VCH Sussex 1.djvu/305

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CRUSTACEANS Westwood's name would lapse as preoccupied, and Hailstone's megacheles would hold the field as prior to Guise's affinis, Spence Bate thought that Hailstone's megacheles was the same as A. edwardsii (Andouin), and if that could be proved Hailstone would once more have the nominal glory snatched from between his teeth. A. ruber has the movable finger of the greater claw not so long as the immovable one, sometimes called the thumb, whereas in edwardsii and affitiis the movable is not shorter than the immovable finger. To prove the difference constant would need a comparison of numerous specimens. White, who had Hailstone's species at command in the British Museum,* ventures no independent judgment, the state of preservation perhaps precluding any. Of the true Hippolytids Mr. Guermonprez reports Hippolyte varians. Leach, as common at Bognor. It has indeed a very extensive distribution, as well as a great capacity for adapting its colour to its environment. Of Hippo/yte fascigera, Gosse, the same diligent recorder mentions a solitary specimen. In 1899 grave doubt was thrown by Mr. A. O. Walker, F.L.S., on the validity of this species. It is certainly the case that those tufts or fascicles of hairs on the body to which the specific name is due are ready to fall off at the slightest provocation, after which there appears to be nothing left by which this form can be distinguished from H. variatis. Mr. Guermonprez states that H. cranchii. Leach, occurs at Bognor now and then. This should probably be referred to Bate's genus Spirontocaris^ In the family Crangonidce three species are attributed to Sussex, On Crangon vulgaris (Linn.) Bell quotes from Hailstone's MS. Notes on the Crustacea of Hastings.^ From the same writer's researches two species were published in 1835 as Pontophilus trispinosus. Hailstone, and P. bispinosus, Westwood, though Westwood, while using the generic name Pontophilus, Leach, expressed his opinion that French authors had rightly made it a synonym of Craugon.^ To this genus the two species were for some time referred, until Kinahan in 1862 placed them under a new generic name Cheraphilus, which he on insufficient grounds substituted for PotitophilusJ' Some of his species fall therefore to that genus, but the Sussex species become Philocheras trispinosus (Hail- stone) and Philocheras tianus (Kroyer)." The important group of the Schizopoda has not hitherto made a good figure in this county. Only Mysis sp., from Ecclesbourne, is recorded in the Natural History of Hastings,^ under the Stomapoda, an old arrangement now relinquished, which combined the schizopods with the entirely different Squillids. Now however Mr. Guermonprez has removed to some extent the stigma of poverty by cataloguing five species. For these he uses generally the nomenclature adopted in Bell's British Stalk-eyed Crustacea, calling the species Mysis chamaleon, M. vulgaris, 1 List of British Jnimals in British Museum, p. 41. ^ Stebbing, History of Crustacea, pp. 234, 236. ' British Stalk-eyed Crustacea, p. 258. * Loudon's Magazine, viii. 261, 265, 395. » Proc. Royal Irish Acad. (1862), pt. I, viii. 7. » Stebbing, South African Crustacea (1900), p. 47. ' First Supplement (1883), p. 45. 259