A mile or two eastward of Babbicombe and Petit Tor, in from ten to fifteen fathoms water, there lies a stretch of flat stony bottom, reaching away from the island known as the Ore Stone, towards the mouth of the river Exe. This is a bit of ground to which a boatman whom I occasionally employ often resorts with the dredge, and rarely or never without a fair harvest of curious and interesting creatures. Among other things he brings me from time to time numerous specimens of what Yarrell calls the Bimaculated Sucker;[86] the propriety of which name will be evident the moment you examine one of these little fishes alive. Cuvier named the group in which they are found (a group comprising very few species) Discoboles, because the ventral pair of fins are united so as to form a circular disk or saucer, by means of which the fishes have the power of adhering firmly to any solid object larger than the circumference of the disk. Yarrell substitutes the term CyclopteridÆ for the family group; the name Cyclopterus, used for the principal genus, expressing the same thing, that the fins are united in a circular fashion. The word bimaculatus, signifying two-spotted, alludes to two remarkable and conspicuous oval spots of dark purplish brown or red, situated one on each side of the body, just behind the pectoral fin. These spots, being comparatively large, and separated from the general colour of the body by a well-defined white ring, constitute a very striking and beautiful feature in these little fishes.

Their form is flattened; they have a broad shovel-shaped muzzle, prominent eyes, looking rather upwards, and the head much widened behind; the head, indeed, constitutes more than one-fourth of the entire length; and at its hinder part, or where the gills open, is far wider than any other part of the fish. They rarely exceed an inch and a half in length. The general hue above is pale red; but in some specimens they become a nearly uniform lake-purple, in others the hue is a clear orange; while yet in others it is almost white. A band of white, bounded by darker lines, almost invariably connects the two eyes. Frequently the hue of the body is varied by clouds and patches of dark reddish brown, which patches have a tendency to assume a constant pattern, quite recognisable when you look at a good many specimens together. In the hinder half and on the sides the ground colour is apt to be minutely divided or mottled, the interspaces being of a delicate azure or lilac; and when examined with a lens, the whole surface seems sown with gold dust. The dorsal fin is set very far back, and, as well as the caudal, is prettily pencilled with dark brown: the under parts are pearly white.

The eyes are exquisitely beautiful, and as they are prominent, very movable, and especially as they are moved quite independently of each other, they at once attract and fix the admiration of the beholder. The large pupil is of a deep lustrous green, the iris of the most brilliant orange gold, and the whole set as it were in the midst of a globe of the purest glass. On the whole I scarcely know of a more attractive little fish than this.

This little Sucker is easily reconciled to captivity. I have in my aquariums some individuals which were captured nearly a year and a half ago; and they are still in the full enjoyment of health and activity. They are pleasing little things: they scuttle from spot to spot with a spasmodic sort of bustle, wagging their tails much from time to time, so that in movement as well as in form they remind one of tadpoles. They are generally seen, however, anchored to the sides of the vessel, or to the prominent knobs of the stones by their sucker, and here they remain for an indefinite time, sometimes for hours, at others only a few seconds, throwing their beautiful eyes about in insatiable curiosity, fanning the water with their transparent pectorals, or whisking the painted tail about. Now and then they make a sudden snap, doubtless at some passing animalcule, with an audible sound, and the emergence of a bubble of air from the top of the water, whence the muzzle is frequently projected. They have an awkward habit of throwing themselves out of a shallow vessel; and if you are not on your guard you may find your little pets dead and dry on the carpet. They are inquisitive little things; if a new stone or shell or tuft of serpulÆ is put into their vessel they soon discover it, and may be seen exploring it in every part; and it is amusing, when you are examining them with a lens, to note how thoroughly mutual is the investigation; for you can see by the direction and motion of the eyes that the little fish is watching you as interestedly as you are observing him.

I do not think that the adhesion of the ventral sucker is effected exactly as has been supposed, by a vacuum produced in the area of the united ventral fins; but by the combined action of some minute fleshy sucking disks, which are arranged in two groups, in front of and behind the united fins. The conjoined fins do not appear to me to make a vacuum. The fish has a curious habit of coming to the surface of the water, and there floating perfectly still, back downward, the entire belly-surface dry. The ventral disk is then seen as a shallow cup, quite dry and shining. If touched, the little fish hurries along the surface, with some splashing, till it acquires impetus enough to go under at an oblique angle, when it presently turns over, and adheres to the bottom, or side of some stone. I have seen this practice frequently, but only, I think, at night.[87]

This principle of a vacuum produced by the retraction of the centre of a fleshy disk, while the margins remain in close contact with a solid body, is of extensive application in the lower forms of animal life, and especially in the class Echinodermata, comprising what are popularly known as Star-fishes, Sea-urchins, and Sea-cucumbers.

I have on other occasions noticed the elaborate and wonderful mechanism of the sucker-feet as they appear in the commoner species of the class. I need not therefore repeat those details, but look at a few other particulars in the economy of the animals whose locomotion is dependent on this curious contrivance.

There is a pretty little species abundant enough hereabout, chiefly affecting shores on which numerous angular masses of stone lie irregularly scattered and heaped one on another. Yet they seem to have a predilection, for they do not occur in all our localities even though these conditions be not lacking. Livermead Point, and the south side of Anstey’s Cove, beneath the cliffs, are favourite spots for them, the former especially, where we can find the little Gibbous Starlet,[88] for such is its name, at all times of the year, when the tide is sufficiently out. The retiring tide here leaves a shallow pool of considerable area, which then continues to run out by a narrow channel among the rock boulders, a winding rivulet of salt water; along whose borders, by turning over the loose blocks, scores of this pretty Star are exposed, clinging to the wet sides and roofs of the dark passages by means of their sucker-feet. Forbes has given two figures of the species, but manifestly taken from dead specimens, and from very small ones too. He says, “large specimens measure only an inch across;” from which I infer that on the shores of the Isle of Man, where he was familiar with it, the Starlet does not attain the dimensions it reaches on our mild southern coast. He indeed alludes to one in Mr. Ball’s collection, which measured one inch and five lines in diameter. Specimens, however, of this size are quite common with us, nor would one of an inch and a half be looked upon as at all exceeding the modest and proper range of the species.

It is of a pentagonal figure, with the margin a little receding between the angles, but not so as to cause the latter to form distinct arms. The body is flat below, and plump and cushion-like above, of a yellowish olive hue, with the very edge of a golden orange tint, while a spot of the latter colour, a little out of the centre, marks the situation of a remarkable organ called the madreporiform tubercle, the proper use of which has not as yet been satisfactorily determined. Just at the extremity of each angle, but a little below, is situated a wart of rich crimson hue, which is supposed to be an eye, being seated on a small ganglionic swelling of a nerve that passes along the ray. It is true no crystalline lens has as yet been detected on the pigment dot, either in this species or any other (for the specks are found in the same position in all the proper Star-fishes), but they are manifestly of the same character as similar specks in Rotifera, and other humble animal forms, which in some examples are connected with an indubitable lens. It might seem at first as if the situation of these eyes were not very favourable to vision; but, in truth, they command the ground just before and around the ray-tip, and also the water in a horizontal direction; and as there is one at each of the five angles, the entire circumferent space is viewed at each moment. Add to this, that the animal is in the habit of very frequently turning up the tip of one or other of its rays, when the range of vision would take in the zenith; and we shall perceive that no position in any other part of the body could be so suitable for the location of eyes as these selected. It is not to be supposed that distinct definition of objects is attained by these rudimentary organs; but the animal is probably conscious of the difference between light and darkness, and may also discern the sudden approach of any object, either by its interception of light, or by its colours, though its features and form may be indistinct. Such a degree of visual perception, though very imperfect in our esteem, may be of great use to this sluggish creature, and amply sufficient for its need.

The whole upper surface of this Starlet is covered with six-sided convex plates, each of which is crowned by a group of short blunt spines; the number in each group varying from one to nine; four to six, however, most commonly; arranged in a diverging tuft. Over the madreporiform tubercle, the tufts are stouter, and bend towards each other, as if to protect this delicate organ, which, whatever its function, is grooved with sinuous furrows, visible only with a considerable magnifying power, like the rounded masses of coral from the tropical seas, called brain-stones.

On the under surface similar stout short spines are arranged in transverse bands across each ray, interrupted, however, by the central furrow, which is perforated with two ranges of orifices to give issue to the sucker-feet, which thus form a double row. These organs do not differ importantly either in structure, function, or appearance, from those in the Cross-fishes, in the Sea-cucumbers, or in the Urchins.

In health and activity the whole upper surface is covered with a forest of short pellucid tubes, closed at the tips, which protrude from pores in the plates, and stand erect, moving, however, to and fro at the will of the animal; they are evidently filled with fluid. I cannot find any notice of these organs: they are probably connected with respiration.

What a wonderful piece of mechanism is a Sea-Urchin! Accustomed as I am to the multitudinous contrivances and compensations that present themselves at every turn to the philosophic naturalist, often as surprising and unexpected as they are beautifully effective, I am yet struck with admiration at the structure of an Echinus whenever I examine it anew. A globular hollow box has to be made, of some three inches in diameter, the walls of which shall be scarcely thicker than a wafer, formed of unyielding limestone, yet fitted to hold the soft tender parts of an animal, which quite fill the concavity at all ages. But in infancy the animal (and, of course, its box, as this must be full) is not so big as a pea; and it has to grow till it attain its adult dimensions. The box is never to be cast off, and replaced by a new one; the same box must hold the infant and the veteran Urchin. The limestone, not being a living tissue, but an inert earth, can grow only by being deposited. Now the vascular tissues are within, and the particles they deposit must be on the interior walls. This would indeed augment the amount of limestone in the box, but it would be at the expense of the contained space. The thicker the walls, if thickened from within, the less room in the cavity; but what is wanted is more room, ever more, and more. The growing animal feels its tissues swelling day by day, by the assimilation of food, and its cry is, “Give me space! a larger house, or else I die.”

How is this problem solved? Ah! there is no difficulty. The inexhaustible wisdom of Jehovah the Creator has invented a beautiful contrivance for the emergency. The box is not made in one piece, nor in ten, nor in a hundred; six hundred distinct pieces go to make up the hollow case; all so accurately fitted together, that the perfect symmetry of the outline is not broken; and yet, thin as their substance is, they retain their relative position with unchanging exactness, and the slight brittle box possesses all requisite strength and firmness.

Each of these symmetrical pieces of shell is enveloped by a layer of living flesh, a vascular tissue of exceeding thinness, which passes up between the joints where one meets another, on every side, and not only so, but actually spreads itself over the whole exterior surface. So that when you take up an Urchin into your hand, and having rubbed a small space clear of spines, look on it; you have not, as you may suppose you have, exposed the surface of the shelly box, but only the flesh that covers it; yet this is so transparent and colourless, so inconceivably thin, so absolutely adherent at every point, that its presence will not be discernible to feeling or sight, without the aid of high microscopic powers.

This being so, the glands of the investing fleshy tissue secrete lime from the sea-water, which holds it in solution, and constantly deposits it, after a determinate and orderly pattern, on every part of the surface of each shelly piece; the inner face, the outer face, and each of the sides and angles of the polyhedron grow together, and all so evenly, that while the dimensions increase, both of thickness and superficies, the form characteristic of that individual piece is maintained with immutable mathematical precision. Thus the volume and capacity of the box grow with the growth of the individual segments, and it ever keeps the globose shape at first imposed upon it.

But this is but a small part of the mechanism of this interesting tribe. If you put into a basin of sea-water one of the pretty kind[89] which we find so abundantly under stones at low water,—whose green spines are tipped with rosy purple, like the tentacles of an Anthea,—you will presently observe it marching majestically along by means of the hundreds of sucker-feet, which it possesses in common with the Star-fish. Now, if you have in your cabinet the empty box of an Urchin of this same kind, and taking it in your hand, hold it up to the light, and look into the cavity from the under or mouth side, you will have a very interesting spectacle. The light streams in through a multitude of minute holes, as smooth and regular as if drilled with a fairy’s wimble; and these holes are arranged in a pattern of elegant symmetry. They run in lines, like meridians, from pole to pole of the flattened globe; but instead of being set at uniform intervals, they constitute five principal sets or bands, with blank intervals between, about twice as wide as the drilled bands. Then each band comprises two series, each of which contains a double row of orifices. These last, again, do not constitute a single unbroken line, but an interrupted or zig-zag line, which is, in fact, made up of a number of short diagonal rows; three holes in each diagonal, set one after another.

Put the living and the dead together. These tiny orifices, as minute as the point of the finest cambric-needle could make in a bit of paper, afford exit to the suckers, which are, of course, equally numerous. Through these pass the slender pellucid tubes, filled with elastic fluid, which carry at their tips a flat ring of calcareous shell, affording to each the form and firmness to make each one an adhesive sucking disk, in the centre of which a tiny vacuum is created at will by muscular retraction.

But this is not all. Again, look at the living Sea-Urchin. It bristles with the rosy-tipped spines, which have a satiny lustre, owing to the reflection of the light from the delicate ridges and furrows with which the whole is fluted, like an Ionic column in miniature. How they are all moving, and swaying to and fro on their bases, quite independently of each other, however, making circles and traverses in the water with their points, as the mast-heads of a ship do among the clouds in a gentle swell, when seen from the deck. Professor Agassiz fell into the egregious blunder of supposing that the spines were the organs of locomotion in the Urchins, denying, with much contempt, the theory which attributed this office to the suckers. One can only wonder whether he ever saw a living Urchin in motion, as one moment’s glance at the phenomenon is sufficient to prove how utterly his theory was false, as Forbes has well shown.

However, let us once more observe the empty denuded box from the cabinet; and now on the exterior. Between the principal bands of pores (called ambulacra, from their fancied resemblance to walks in a garden), as also between the two series which constitute each band, the space is studded with hemispherical warts, of very diverse size, which look as if turned in ivory, unpolished; and each wart is crowned with a smaller wart of like material, but bearing the most perfect polish.

At the bottom of each spine there is a cavity exactly fitting this second wart, and equally highly-polished in its interior. During life the spine was seated on the wart, not united to it, but moving upon it in all directions, with perfect smoothness and freedom; a ball and socket joint, in fact. It was held in its place by an investment of muscle, which completely enclosed both the wart and the base of the spine, having one insertion in the unpolished wart, and the other in a remarkable ring or shoulder of the spine, visible just above the socket.

These are but two or three salient points of interest in the structure of this little unvalued, disregarded creature. I could relate much more; indeed, I think it would not be difficult to write a bulky volume of the history and biography of a single Sea-Urchin, of which every page would display the glory of God. But I have not space for that here.

We sometimes, but very rarely, find on this coast a very lovely form of this class of animals, the Rosy Feather-star.[90] It consists of ten long attenuated arms, radiating from a common centre, composed each of about forty slender joints of stone, and each joint carrying a pair of diverging beards, also many-jointed, all of which together, by their number and arrangement, give to the arm the aspect of a beautiful feather. Around the central point of radiation, a small cup-like body gives origin to the arms, which are double, a pair springing from a single basal joint. Within the cup the soft parts of the animal are chiefly located, the organs of the vital functions; and from the convex surface spring a number of jointed stony threads, like necklaces, much shorter and slenderer than the arms, which serve as claspers, gripping and holding firmly the projections of the rock, by means of strong curved claws with which they are terminated, in shape like those of an eagle.

The whole elegant creature is of a lively rose tint, interrupted by patches of bright yellow, disposed with no regularity or apparent order; the whole, both the yellow and the rosy portions, studded with crimson dots. Edward Forbes, if I rightly understand him, considers these dots to be ovaries, which he estimates at upwards of 57,000 in number.

In infancy the Feather-star is seated at the extremity of a long slender jointed stalk, attached at its lower end, whence it rises erect, like a plant. Indeed the whole animal, in this condition, with its cup-like base and elegantly incurving arms, seated on its tall stem, has so close a resemblance of outline to a flower, that the fossil specimens, which are very numerous, and of large size, are known as Lily-stones, and technically as Encrinites, which word has the same allusion. After a while, the radiating portion, or flower, separates from the stalk, and swims freely, contracting its arms to give the impulse, in the manner of a Medusa.

Who, on looking at these two creatures side by side,—the Sea-Urchin and the Encrinite,—would imagine that they possessed any close natural relationship, or would suspect that they could have been framed on the same model? Yet it is really so; there is a common plan of structure in both; pervading, too, many intermediate forms, which at first sight would seem to manifest as little resemblance to the one as to the other. It would, in fact, be easy to select from any well-furnished museum a continuous chain of specimens, whose links approach each other so closely as to form an unbroken series from the Urchin to the Feather-star.

Among the Urchins proper there are some species, such as the Sphere Sea-egg, and the one known as Fleming’s, which have a figure not far from that of a globe. Others are much more depressed, of which the little Purple-tipped is a notable example. Still the spherical shape is conspicuous. From this rounded form other species, more and more flattened, gradually lead to the Scutella, which takes the form of a thin round plate, quite flat beneath, but slightly convex on the upper surface. The structure is the same as before, but the spines appear to the naked eye only as very minute hairs; but, when magnified, are found to be of the most elaborate workmanship, each having a movable socket-joint. In the genus Clypeaster, the round outline is changed for a five-sided figure, the angles of which in succeeding species project more and more, and the spaces between become more and more indented, till we arrive at the Starlets, and at length to the Cross-fishes (AsteriadÆ). The rays gradually becoming longer and more slender, we are brought to those in which they are so lengthened as to resemble the tails of so many serpents, whence they are named Ophiura. In succeeding genera, such as that called Medusa’s head (Gorgonocephalus), the central part is still further diminished, and the rays are divided into branches of great length and number. Each ray, soon after its commencement, separates into two more; these again into two others, and so on to an astonishing extent. Upwards of 2500 ramifications have been counted on a single specimen, presenting a living net, by the contraction of which any small animal once touched would inevitably be detained. The sucker-feet are no longer found, these animals changing their position by dragging themselves along by their flexible arms. Finally, we have the Feather-stars, which, as we have seen, in their infant condition, and the Lily-stars, which throughout life (as the abundant fossil species in our own land, and that noble one which still exists in the West Indian seas), consist of slender-jointed arms, with feather-like filaments, seated at the free extremity of a tall jointed stalk, also furnished with whorls of filaments, which is fixed by its base to the solid rock.

Altogether, the series presents us with one of the most instructive and most marvellous examples of the vast variety of external form and internal structure which may be assumed by almost insensible modifications of one plan of organization; and so of the unfathomable resources of wisdom in the ever-blessed God. For every one of these links,—and there are multitudes which I have not named, found either in remote seas or in a fossil condition, that fill up the gaps with close gradations—displays an essentially common model; and the least fragment of the stony skeleton of any one would be sufficient to enable a competent naturalist to decide authoritatively, the instant he looked at it beneath his microscope, that it belonged to the great class Echinodermata. The calcareous shell of which the framework is composed,—a glass made of lime,—is deposited in a fashion which, while common to all, is found nowhere else throughout the whole animal kingdom.

Let us turn from these investigations, fascinating as they are, to examine the ways and means of two or three other creatures, familiar enough to us who habitually explore the sea-margin. I allude to certain members of the great class Crustacea, not Crabs nor Lobsters exactly, but called so by courtesy, something in fact between both. My dredger’s hauls are always sure to contain, creeping in the tangled thickets of Laomedea, Antennularia, and other of the flexible Polyps, or playing at bo-peep from the interstices of the Serpula masses,—numerous specimens of a tiny Crab,[91] with a circular flat shell, no bigger than a split-pea, large wide claws, and very long antennÆ, like two hairs. They are of various colours, sometimes pure white, sometimes chocolate-brown, and often clouded with different hues. Minute as they are, they are not despised by great fishes; for the heavy-sided, clumsy-headed cods, that occupy so large an area on the fishmonger’s slab, are often found to have their stomachs packed full with these little Crabs; which doubtless the glutton picks off one by one, enjoying the taste of the savoury atom as it rolls over his fat fleshy tongue.

But we may much more easily procure specimens of his bigger brother, the Shaggy Flat-crab,[92] which abounds under nearly every flat stone at low-water on Babbicombe beach, and indeed almost everywhere else, under the like conditions. He is a curious subject, though far from attractive as to his personnel, for he is, I regret to say, of irreclaimably dirty habits. You never find him but he is begrimed and saturated, so to speak, with the impalpable red mud of which our soil consists,—the dÉbris of the red sandstone. Yet blame him not. He is more hirsute than a modern swell; his hands and his face are as hairy as Esau’s; a dense short pile of stiff bristles stands out from all his prominences, and catches and entangles the sediment in the midst of which he loves to riot. I say again, blame him not; we must not infer that he likes dirt for its own sake, because he gets his living in it, any more than the sweep or the dustman chose his trade because he had a penchant for the grime. Nay, dirty as our little flat friend is, he is endowed with organs expressly for the purpose of cleaning himself, and fails not to use them too. On first looking at him you would suppose, comparing him with other Crabs, that he was short of one pair of feet; yet presently, from a narrow, almost invisible crevice behind, he jerks out two jointed limbs, as slender as bristles, which, however, are each terminated by a tiny two-fingered claw, and are beset throughout their length by stiff short hairs standing out at right angles, like a brush. These feeble limbs are indeed cleansing brushes, with which he keeps certain portions of his person clean, applying them with the greatest ease to the whole surface of the abdomen, and under-side of the carapace or body-shell, while the delicate fingers of the little hand are used to pick off adhering matters that cannot be removed by brushing. Then having done his washing, he cleans his brushes with his mouth, and snugly folds them up, and packs them away in their groove till he wants them again. Yet with all this, he remains, as I said at first, a dirty subject notwithstanding.

A curious chapter in the history of this little creature, which I have put on record elsewhere,[93] is, I think, so very instructive, that I may venture to repeat some parts of it here. Let me premise that the Crab habitually lives under stones, a habit for which the remarkable flatness and thinness of all its parts adapts it; he has somewhat of the appearance of having been crushed flat by the pressure of the stone under which he lives. He does not wander much to seek his food, but expects it to be brought to him, he making provision for its conveyance.

The organs which he employs for this end are the outer foot-jaws or pedipalps, which are of unusual length, and are fringed with incurving hairs. Watching a Flat-crab beneath a stone close to the side of my tank, I noticed that his long antennÆ were continually flirted about; these are doubtless sensitive organs of touch, or some analogous sense, which inform the animal of the presence, and perhaps of the nature, of objects within reach. At the same time I remarked that the outer foot-jaws were employed alternately in making casts; being thrown out deliberately, but without intermission, and drawn in, exactly in the manner of the fringed hand of a barnacle, of which both the organ and the action strongly reminded me. I looked at this more closely with the aid of a lens; each foot-jaw formed a perfect spoon of hairs, which at every cast expanded, and partly closed. That this may be better understood, I may say that the foot-jaw resembles a sickle in form, being composed of five joints, of which the last four are curved like the blade of that implement. Each of these joints is set along its inner edge with a row of parallel bristles, of which those of the last joint arch out in a semicircle, continuing the curve of the limb; the rest of the bristles are curved parallel or concentrical with these, but diminish in length as they recede downwards. It will be seen, therefore, that when the joints of the foot-jaw are thrown out, approaching to a straight line, the curved hairs are made to diverge; but as the cast is made, they resume their parallelism, and sweep-in, as with a net, the atoms of the embraced water. The microscope revealed to me a still higher perfection in this admirable contrivance. I then saw that every individual bristle is set on each side with a row of short stiff hairs, projecting nearly at right angles to its length; these hairs meeting point to point those of the next bristle, and so on in succession, there is formed a most complete net of regular meshes, which must enclose and capture every tiny insect or animalcule that floats within its range; while, at each out-cast, it opens at every mesh, and allows all refuse to be washed away or fall to the ground. For we are not to suppose that the captures thus promiscuously made are as indiscriminately swallowed. A multitude of atoms are gathered, which would be quite unfit for food; and a power of selection resides in the mouth, whether it be the sense of taste or touch; or any other analogous but recondite perception, by which the useful only is admitted, the worthless, or at least the injurious, being rejected.

Companions of the Flat-crabs, closely allied to them in all essentials of form and structure, yet widely separated by general figure and appearance, and to some extent by habits too, are the Squat-lobsters. They, too, are somewhat flat, but they are more decidedly lobster-like, with a distinctly jointed abdomen as broad as the body, terminating in wide and strong swimming-plates. This portion is, during rest, thrown-in under the body, much more completely than a true lobster or prawn can do it, and yet is by no means so permanently set in that position as in the true crabs. The Flat-crabs and the Squat-lobsters constitute an intermediate group between the short-tailed and the long-tailed Crustacea, the Flat-crabs inclining to the one, the Squats to the other alliance. When the abdomen is wrapped-in, the outline of the Squat is nearly oval, particularly in the commonest species, the Olive or Scaly Squat.[94] That of the Scarlet or Embleton’s species[95] is a longer ellipse. The front runs out into several sharp spines, as do also the edges of the carapace; and the inner edges of the front limbs, which carry long and stout claws, are very spiny. More formidably armed in this respect, however, than either, is another species, found occasionally at low-water, the Painted or Spinous Squat,[96] all the limbs being set, on both edges, with stout sharp prickles. The last named is the largest kind, being sometimes four inches long; then the Olive, which is commonly from two to two and a half; while the Scarlet rarely exceeds an inch and a half. They differ very much in colour, the Olive being of a dull blackish green, with narrow transverse lines of pale yellowish; the Painted somewhat of the same general hue, but with the eyes and the tips of the claws of the most vivid scarlet, while the body is varied with lines and spots of an equally brilliant azure. Embleton’s is of a more or less bright red, varying from a light orange or warm cream colour to a full orange, clouded with patches of deep scarlet. The last is an inhabitant of deep water, obtained only by the dredge; by this means, however, I obtain it in considerable numbers. The other two are found, the first abundantly, the second rather rarely, under stones in our coves. I have found, in autumn, in such situations, several specimens of small size, rather smaller than full-grown Embletons, which I conclude to be the young of the Painted. The whole body is pale blue, tesselated all over with black and reddish brown; the legs are banded with red, and the hands are of the same colour. They have a very pretty appearance.

The whole race are very cautious and timid. With the long claws, and the longer antennÆ, stretched out to their utmost in front, the suspicious Squat feels the unknown ground with delicate touches; should he touch any object that moves, he gives on the instant a vigorous flap with the broad incurved tail, and shoots backward through the water to the distance of several inches. At the same moment all the legs are thrown forward in the line of the body, to diminish the resistance. Mr. Couch says: “It is very remarkable to witness the accuracy with which they” [he is speaking of the Painted species specially] “will dart backward for several feet into a hole very little larger than themselves: this I have often seen them do, and always with precision.” This would surely be a remarkable feat for an animal in the air; how much more through a medium so dense and resisting as sea-water!

I have elsewhere[97] described and figured the young of a species of this genus in two of its stages. In the first it may be compared with a prawn, having a lengthened slender body, whose fore part is protected by a prawn-like transparent carapace, with an immensely long straight spine in front, and two hooked ones behind. In the next stage the general figure is acquired, but still the form is more like that of Porcellana than of Galathea.