The prosoma is well developed. The stomach is surrounded in the upper part by a circle of large branching cæca. The generative system is highly developed; the testes coating the whole of the stomach, entering the filamentary appendages and the pedicels of the cirri; the two ovigerous lamellæ contain a vast number of ova; they are united to rather large fræna, of which the sinuous margin supports either a continuous row or separate tufts of glands.

Distribution.—The species abound over the arctic, temperate and tropical parts of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, and are always, or nearly always, attached to floating objects, dead or alive. The same species have enormous ranges; in proof of which I may mention that of the six known species, five are found nearly all over the world, including the British coast; and the one not found on our shores, the L. australis, apparently inhabits the whole circumference of the southern ocean.

General Remarks and Affinities.—The first five species form a most natural genus; they are often sufficiently difficult to be distinguished, owing to their great variability. The sixth species (L. fascicularis) differs to a slight extent in many respects from the other species, and has considerable claims to be generically separated, as has been proposed by Mr. Gray, under the name of Dosima; but as it is identical in structure in all the more essential parts, I have not thought fit to separate it. As far as external characters go, some of the species of Pæcilasma have not stronger claims, than has L. fascicularis, to be generically separated; and I at first retained them altogether, but in drawing up this generic description, I found scarcely a single observation applicable to both halves of the genus; hence I was led to separate Lepas and Pæcilasma. If I had retained these two genera together, I should have had, also, to include the species of Dichelaspis and Oxynaspis; and even Scalpellum would have been separable only by the number of its valves; this would obviously have been highly inconvenient. Although some of the species of Pæcilasma so closely resemble externally the species of Lepas, yet if we consider their entire structure, we shall find that they are sufficiently distinct; as indirect evidence of this, I may remark that Conchoderma (as defined in this volume), includes two genera of most authors, and yet certainly comes, if judged by its whole organisation, nearer to Lepas than does Pæcilasma.

1. [Lepas anatifera]. [Tab. I.] [fig. 1.] (var.)

L. anatifera. Linnæus. Systema Naturæ, 1767.

Anatifa vel anatifera vel pentalasmis lævis[24], plerumque auctorum.

———— engonata (!).[25] Conrad. Journal Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelphia, vol. vii, 1837, p. 262, Pl. xx, fig. 15.

———— dentata (var.) Brugière. Encyclop. Meth. (des Vers), 1789.

Pentalasmis dentatus (var.) Brown. Illust. Conch., Pl. lii, fig. 5.

Anatifa . . . . . . . . . . . . Martin St. Ange. Mem. sur l’organisation des Cirripedes, 1835.