A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 1842.'^ Both White and Bell use the designation Nika edulis, Risso, White calling the species ' Risso's shrimp,' and explaining that ' the name here adopted is prior to Dr. Leach's, and is given to it from the species being eaten on the coasts of the Mediterranean, as the Shrimp is eaten here.' ^ But on the question of priority he is mistaken, since Risso's genus and species were published in 181 6, while the fourth part of Leach's Malacostraca Podophthalmata Britannia, containing, in plate 41 and its accompanying text, the figures and description of Processa r^/W/a/Az/^, was published on July i, 1815. Of the Pandalids Pandalus montagui. Leach, is reported by Mr. Guermonprez as occurring often at Bognor. The only other species at present claiming to rank among Sussex prawns, as distinguished from shrimps, is involved in much obscurity. In 1798 Fabricius established the genus Alpheus for species in which the first pair of chelipeds are enormously larger than the second and are composed of two unequal and dissimilar limbs, though both are strongly chelate, while, instead of the long serrate horn with which our ordinary prawns are armed, in Alpheus the rostrum is minute and the carapace is produced over the eyes, thus protecting them by a more or less pellucid shield. In evident allusion to this last character the eccentric naturalist Rafinesque in 18 14, probably unaware of the Fabrician genus, named a new one Cryptophthalmus, meaning ' eyes under cover,' for a Mediterranean species which he called C. ruber. In 1835 S. Hailstone, jun., Esq., while apparently still a tyro in the subject, investigated several crustaceans from the Sussex coast, and then submitted his descriptions, figures and specimens to the distinguished and afterwards celebrated entomologist, J. O. Westwood. The latter pub- lished a report upon them which in some respects was far from giving satisfaction to Mr. Hailstone. The point here needing mention is that one of the species was entitled ' Hippolyte rubra, Westwood,' and this the discoverer of the specimen claimed a right to call ' H. macrocheles. Hailstone.' Westwood himself was undecided both as to the genus and the species, for he suggested that it might be proper to call the object examined Cryptophthalmus ruber. Subsequently he formed a new genus for it, Dienecia, with ' Hippolyte ? rubra ' for the type.' In 1837 Milne- Edwards, knowing nothing of this insular dispute, called a species Alpheus ruber, which goes by his name as author, although he explains in a footnote that it appears to him to be the same as Rafinesque's species.* In 1854 Mr. Guise described a species as A. affinis, and in 1857 Adam White, accepting this as distinct from A. ruber of Milne- Edwards, gives the description, and in a footnote says, ' Mr. Guise thinks this may be the Hippolyte rubra of Hailstone, on which Mr. Westwood founded the genus Dienecia.' ^ But if Alpheus affinis. Guise, be distinct from A. ruber (Rafinesque) and identical with A. ruber (Westwood), then ' BntUh Sttilk-ned CrustMe^, p. 277. ^ Popular History of British Crustacea, p. 1 14. 3 Loudon s Magazine of Natural History, viii. 274, 395, 552. * Hist. Nat. Crustaces, ii. 351. ^ Popular History of Btitish Crustacea, p. 112, with reference to ' Jn». and Mag. Nat. Hist. (1854), p. 278, fig. p. 280.' ^^g
Page:VCH Sussex 1.djvu/304
This page needs to be proofread.