Halimus spinosus Hess.

Halimus spinosus Hess, Archiv. fur Nat., 1865, p. 129, pl. 6, fig. 1, 1865; Haswell, Cat. Aust. Crust., p. 6, 1882; McCulloch, Rec. Aust. Mus., 7, p. 53, 1908. Halimus truncatipes Miers, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 5, 4, p. 3, 1879; Baker, Trans. Roy. Soc. S.Aust., 29, p. 120, pl. 22, figs. 2, 2a, 1905.

One male with carapace 27 mm. long from rock-pools, Sunday Island (Captain Bollons); two smaller males from Meyer Island (W. R. B. Oliver); and one female with carapace 23 mm. long from Coral Bay, Sunday Island (T. Iredale).

These specimens agree closely with the description given by Miers for H. truncatipes, and undoubtedly belong to the same species as the specimen described by him; they also agree with the short description of H. spinosus given by Hess as quoted by Haswell, and I follow Haswell in considering these two species probably identical. According to Miers, H. truncatipes differs from H. spinosus by the much more squarely truncated joints of the ambulatory legs. In my female specimen, and particularly in the very small male specimen, these joints are less squarely truncated than in the large male, and the character is doubtless one that varies with the age of the specimen. The tubercles on the carapace agree very closely with the description given by Miers, and nearly all of them bear a number of yellow hooked or curved hairs. These are mentioned by Hess, but not by Miers, who only says that the legs are clothed with long fulvous hairs. In a dried specimen nearly all these hairs came away with the seaweeds when these were removed to expose the surface of the carapace. The median spine on the posterior margin of the carapace is moderately well marked in the female, but in the male is represented only by a small tubercle tipped with yellow hairs. Miers describes the chelipeds in the male as small; in my specimens they are somewhat swollen and smooth, with the fingers meeting only at the tip when closed, as in H. laevis Haswell. Both specimens bear on the carapace a number of seaweeds held by the curved hairs.

[I had written the above before I noticed that Mr. McCulloch had come to the same conclusion as to the identity of these two species, and that Mr. Baker also concurred after comparing Sydney specimens with those at first referred by him to H. truncatipes.]