THE following synopsis, together with the one given in this journal for September, includes the whole macrurous fauna of North America north of the southern boundary of the United States and within the hundred-fathom line. Geographical distribution is indicated, as before, by full-faced letters: N, M, S, indicating the northern, middle, and southern Atlantic coast A, P, D, corresponding divisions of the Pacific coast. The Astacoid forms include those forms familiarly known as lobsters and crayfishes, as well as some others for which no common name is in general use. The crayfishes (genera Astacus and Cambarus) are inhabitants of fresh water; the others are marine. Most important of these is the lobster, once very abundant from New York northward, but now becoming much more rare, owing to overfishing and to disregard of the law prohibiting the taking of immature and egg-bearing animals. The crayfish are fresh-water forms, occurring sparingly in New England and the southern British Provinces, and far more abundantly in the rest of our territory, where every stream and pond has its representatives. The discrimination of the species is not easy, and for the present we give no key to the fifty-one species described from our limits. The difficulties which surround the systematic arrangement of these forms can be seen from the fact that the late William Stimpson, our most accurate student of the Crustacea, would not touch the crayfish, remarking that either we had only one species of Cambarus in our country, or each mud puddle had its own species. In the southern waters and on our Pacific coast the lobster
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Dec 31, 1969
James Van Maanenberg 
