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A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE To Mr. James Saunders I am again indebted for a reference to the circumstance that at a microscopical meeting of the Bedfordshire Natural History Society on January 20, 1880, among other objects of pond life ' Daphne vetu/a ' was exhibited. The use of this name carries the mind back to 1776, when the species intended was actually so called by O. F. Miiller. The conspicuously-branched second antenna?, to which the name Cladocera is due, and which all the Cladocera possess except the females of a single genus, are also responsible for the name Daphne. Miiller avowedly chose it in allusion to the shrubby antennas, but after- wards exchanged it for Daphnia, in order that his shrubby genus in zoology might not be confounded with the botanical shrub. At the same time he changed the specific name from vetula, 'a little old woman,' to sima, 'snub-nosed.' Eventually his genus Daphnia was found to be too comprehensive, and this particular species was assigned to a new genus, Simocepha/us, by Schoedler, who restored the original specific name, so that the Cladocera of Bedfordshire are now represented by Simocepha/us vetu/us (Miiller). In Daphnia the head is carinate above; in Simocepha/us the head is convex and blunt. This genus is also devoid of the sharp angle or the more or less prolonged spine into which the species of Daphnia almost always have the valves produced behind. Like the rest of the Daphniidas, Simocepha/us has one branch three-jointed and the other four-jointed in the large second antenna?, which are its swimming organs. For definitely assigning Ostracoda to the county I can rely on the sure authority of Mr. D. J. Scourfield. In 1896 the presence of Candona pubescens (Koch) ' at Pavenham, Bedfordshire,' was noted by Brady and Norman in an appendix to their ' Monograph of the Marine and Fresh- water Ostracoda of the North Atlantic and of North-Western Europe.' 1 But whereas they expressly attribute this record to Mr. Scourfield, he himself in 1898 states that the only known British locality for the species in question is Wanstead Park in Essex, ' as the reference to Pavenham in Brady and Norman's "Monograph" . . . was made under a misunderstanding.' 2 To compensate for this disappointment he has lately informed me by letter that he has received from his cousin two other nearly related species, Candona Candida (O. F. Miiller) and Erpeto- cypris strigata (O. F. Miiller), the locality for both of them being Paven- ham. Both belong to the family Cypridas in the section Podocopa. The generic name Erpetocypris means the creeping Cypris, and in the definition Brady and Norman say that 'the power of swimming is lost, and the habits of the animals, which creep along the bottom, are thus very different from those of Cypris.' 3 In the same way however Baird, in defining Candona, remarks that 'the animal creeps at the bottom or upon aquatic plants, instead of swimming freely through the water.'* But Candona, though similar in habit to Erpetocypris, is distinguished from it, as also from Cypris, by having no branchial plate on the second maxillas. Erpetocypris strigata has the lower margin of the shell nearly 1 Trans. R.Dublin Soc. (1896), ser. 2, v. 729. 2 The Essex Naturalist (1898), x. 322. 3 Trans. R. Dublin Soc. (1889), ser. 2, iv. 84. 4 British Entomostraca, Ray Society (1850), p. 159. 96