The Van Diemen's Land Cray-fish.

ASTACUS FRANKLINII, t.3.

f.
1 .-- Carapace convex on the sides, rather rugose on the sides behind, the front only slightly produced and edged with a toothed raised margin not reaching beyond the front edge of the lower orbit, and with a very short ridge at the middle of each orbit behind; the hands compressed, rather rugose, edge thick and toothed: wrist with four or five conical spines on the inner side, the front the largest: the central caudal lobe, broad, continuous, calcareous to the tip, lateral lobes, with a very slight central keel; the sides of the second abdominal rings spinose.
Inhab.

Van Diemen's Land.
Mr.Milne Edwards, (Archives du Museum, ii.35.t.

3.) has recently described a species of this genus from Madagascar, under the name of A.
MADAGASCARIENSIS, which is nearly allied to the Van Diemen's Land species, in the shortness of the frontal process, the spines on the sides of the second abdominal segment, and in the lobes of the tail; but it differs from it in the length of the claws, and other particulars.
Madagascar appears to be the tropical confines of the genus.
2.