the carapace is much more developed in the comparatively sedentary
female than in the usually more active male. Only in the male
do the second antennae attain considerable length, with strong
resemblance to what is found in some of the Amphipoda. About
150 species distributed among thirty-four genera are now known,
many from shallow water and from between tide-marks, some from
very great depths. H. J. Hansen concludes that “they are all
typically ground animals, and as yet no species has been taken under
such conditions that it could be reckoned to the pelagic plankton.”
As they have been found in all zones and chiefly by a very few
observers, it is probable that a great many more species remain to
be discovered. In recent years thirteen species, all belonging to
the same genus Pseudocuma (fig. 3), have been recorded by Sars from
the Caspian Sea. A bibliography of the order is given in that
author’s Crustacea of Norway, vol. iii. (1899–1900).
 |
| Fig. 4.—Rhabdosoma piratum, Stebbing. |
6. Isopoda.—This vast and populous order can be traced far back in geological time. It is now represented in all seas and lands, in fresh-water lakes and streams, and even in warm springs. It adapts itself to parasitic life not only in fishes, but in its own class Crustacea, and that in species of every order, its own included. In this process changes of structure are apt to occur, and sometimes unimaginable sacrifices of the normal appearance. The order has been divided into seven tribes, of which a fuller summary than can here be given will be found in Stebbing, History of Crustacea (1893). The first tribe, called Chelifera, from the usually chelate or claw-bearing first limbs, may be regarded as Isopoda anomala, of which some authors would form a separate order, Tanaidea. Like the genuine isopods, they have seven pairs of trunk-legs, but instead of having seven segments of the middle body (or peraeon) normally free, they have the first one or two of its segments coalesced with the head. Instead of the breathing organs being furnished by the appendages of the pleon with the heart in their vicinity, the respiration is controlled by the maxillipeds, with the heart in the peraeon (see Delage, Arch. Zool. expér. et gén., vol. ix., 1881). There are two families, Tanaidae and Apseudidae. Occasionally the ocular lobes are articulated.
The genuine Isopoda are divided among the Flabellifera, in which the terminal segment and uropods form a flabellum or swimming fan; the Epicaridea, parasitic on Crustaceans; the Valvifera, in which the uropods fold valve-like over the branchial pleopods; the Asellota, in which the first pair of pleopods of the female are usually transformed into a single opercular plate; the Phreatoicidea, a fresh-water tribe, known as yet only from subterranean waters in New Zealand and an Australian swamp nearly 6000 ft. above sea-level; and lastly, the Oniscidea, which are terrestrial. Only the last of these, under the contemptuous designation of wood-lice, has established a feeble claim to popular recognition. Few persons hear without surprise that England itself possesses more than a score of species in this air-breathing tribe. Those known from the world at large number hundreds of species, distributed among dozens of genera in six families. That a wood-louse and a land-crab are alike Malacostracans, and that they have by different paths alike become adapted to terrestrial life, are facts which even a philosopher might condescend to notice. Of the other tribes which are aquatic there is not space to give even the barest outline. Their swarming multitudes are of enormous importance in the economy of the sea. If in their relation to fish it must be admitted that many of them plague the living and devour the dead, in return the fish feed rapaciously upon them. Among the most curious of recent discoveries is that relating to some of the parasitic Cymothoidae, as to which Bullar has shown that the same individual can be developed first as a male and then as a female. Of lately discovered species the most striking is one of the deep-sea Cirolanidae, Bathynomus giganteus, A. M. Edwards (1879), which is unique in having supplementary ramified branchiae developed at the bases of the pleopods. Its eyes are said to contain nearly 4000 facets. The animal attains what in this order is the monstrous size of 9 in. by 4. A general uniformity of the trunk-limbs in Isopoda justifies the ordinal name, but the valviferous Astacillidae, and among the Asellota the Munnopsidae, offer some remarkable exceptions to this characteristic. Among many essential works on this group may be named the Monogr. Cymothoarum of Schiödte and Meinert (1879–1883); “Challenger” Report, Beddard (1884–1886); Cirolanidae, H. J. Hansen (1890); Isopoda Terrestria, Budde-Lund (1885); Bopyridae, Bonnier (1900); Crustacea of Norway, vol. ii. (Isopoda), Sars (1896–1899), while their multitude precludes specification of important contributions by Benedict, Bovallius, Chilton, Dohrn, Dollfus, Fraisse, Giard and Bonnier, Harger, Haswell, Kossmann, Miers, M‘Murrich, Norman, Harriet Richardson, Ohlin, Studer, G. M. Thomson, A. O. Walker, Max Weber and many others.
7. Amphipoda.—As in the genuine Isopoda, the eyes of Amphipoda are always sessile, and generally paired, and, in contrast to crabs and lobsters, these two groups have only four pairs of mouth-organs instead of six, but seven pairs of trunk-legs instead of five. From the above-named isopods the present order is strongly differentiated by having heart and breathing organs not in the pleon, but in the peraeon, or middle body, the more or less simple branchial vesicles being attached to some or all of the last six pairs of trunk-legs. Normally the pleon carries six pairs of two-branched appendages, of which the first three are much articulated flexible swimming feet, the last three few-jointed comparatively indurated uropods. There are three tribes, Gammaridea, Caprellidea, Hyperiidea. The middle one contains but two families, the cylindrical and often thread-like skeleton shrimps, Caprellidae, and their near cousins, the broad, flattened, so-called whale-lice, Cyamidae. This tribe has the pleon dwindled into insignificance, whereas in the other two tribes it is powerfully developed. The Hyperiidea are distinguished by having their maxillipeds never more than three-jointed. In the companion tribes these appendages have normally seven joints, and always more than three. The order thus sharply divided is united by an intimate interlacing of characters, and forms a compact whole at present defying intrusion from any other crustacean group. Since 1775, when J. C. Fabricius instituted the genus Gammarus for five species, of which only three were amphipods, while he left five other amphipods in the genus Oniscus, from this total of eight science has developed the order, at first very slowly, but of late by great leaps and bounds, so that now the Gammaridea alone comprise more than 1300 species, distributed among some 300 genera and 39 families. They burrow in the sands of every shore; they throng the weeds between tide-marks; they ascend all streams; they are found in deep wells, in caverns, in lakes; in Arctic waters they swarm in numbers beyond computation; they find lodgings on crabs, on turtles, on weed-grown buoys; they descend into depths of the ocean down to hundreds or thousands of fathoms; they are found in mountain streams as far above sea-level as some of their congeners live below it. The Talitridae, better known as sandhoppers, can forgo the briny shore and content themselves with the damp foliage of inland forests or casual humidity in the crater of an extinct volcano. Over the ocean surface, as well as at various depths, float and swim innumerable Hyperiidea—the wonderful Phronima, glass-like in its glassy barrel hollowed out of some Tunicate; the Cystisoma, 4 or 5 in. long, with its eye-covered head; the Rhabdosoma, like a thin rod of glass, with needle-like head and tail, large eyes, but limbs and mouth-organs all in miniature, and the second antennae of the male folding up like a carpenter’s rule (fig. 4). On jelly-fishes are to be found species of Hyperia and their kindred, so fat and wholesome that they have been commended to shipwrecked men in open boats as an easily procurable resource against starvation. Many of the Amphipoda are extremely voracious. Some of them are even cannibals. The Cyamidæ afflict the giant whale by nibbling away its skin; the Chelura terebrans is destructive to submerged timber. But, on the other hand, they largely help to clear the sea and other waters of refuse and carrion, and for fishes, seals and whales they are food desirable and often astoundingly copious. From the little flea-like species, scarcely a tenth of an inch long, up to the great and rare but cosmopolitan Eurythenes gryllus, Lichtenstein, and the still larger Alicella gigantea, Chevreux, nearly half a foot long, captured by the prince of Monaco from a depth of 2936 fathoms, not one of these ubiquitous, uncountable hordes has ever been accused of assailing man. For the naturalist they have the recommendation that many are easy to obtain, that most, apart from the very minute, are easy to handle, and that all, except as to the fleeting colours, are easy to preserve.
A nearly complete bibliography of the order down to 1888 will be found in the “Challenger” Reports, vol. xxviii., and supplementary notices in Della Valle’s Monograph of the Gammarini (1893), the scope of his work, however, not covering the Hyperiidea and Oxycephalidae of Bovallius (1889, 1890); but since these dates very numerous additions to the literature have been made by Birula, Bonnier, Norman, Walker and others, especially the Crustacea of Norway, vol. i. (Amphipoda), Sars (1890–1895), demanding attention, and the quite recent Amphipoda of the Hirondelle, Chevreux (1900), and Hyperiidea of the Plankton-Expedition, Vosseler (1901). (T. R. R. S.)
MALAGA, a maritime province of southern Spain, one of
the eight modern subdivisions of Andalusia; bounded on the
W. by Cadiz, N. by Seville and Cordova, E. by Granada, and
S. by the Mediterranean Sea. Pop. (1900), 511,989; area, 2812
sq. m. The northern half of Malaga belongs to the great
