A WIDE STRETCH 27 



The remains make it probable that some of them attained 

 a length of six feet and a breadth at the widest part of the 

 body of nearly two feet. The sculpture on the carapace, 

 like conventional feathers drawn by some old Assyrian 

 artist, is thought to have led the Scotch quarrymen to 

 call these giant fossils by the quaint name of Seraphim. 1 

 Great as their size was, their organisation would have 

 little fitted them to cope with an armed knight. Their 

 nearest living allies belong to the genus Limulus, in which 

 the eastern King Crab, Limulus moluccanus, attains a 

 breadth of a foot by a length of two feet, although, to be 

 sure, nearly one half of the length consists only of a great 

 caudal spine. Among the Brachyura, Japan possesses a 

 species which is certainly from one point of view a rival 

 in size to the largest Pterygotus, and may almost seem to 

 justify the old mythical narratives, for Macrocheira Kampferi, 

 de Haan, as a specimen in the British Museum shows, can 

 span eight feet, and it is said that sometimes even eleven 

 feet are within the compass of the outstretched arms of 

 the male. But portentous as we must allow these dimen- 

 sions to be, the animal is after all only a spider crab, with 

 comparatively weak and spindly legs, and a carapace 

 which seldom if ever exceeds twelve inches in either 

 length or breadth. 



The fossil Trilobites, which compose the third order of 

 the Gigantostraca, include indeed many species of incon- 

 siderable size, but they are also represented by forms such 

 as Asaphus tyrannus, Murchison, about a foot long, and 

 others in the genus Paradoxides, measuring twenty-one 

 inches. 



Among the spiny lobsters or crawfish, a New Zealand 

 species, Palinurus tumidus, has recently been described by 

 Mr. T. W. Kirk as measuring twenty-four inches from the 

 tip of the beak to the end of the tail, and as having the 

 carapace very much swollen, and measuring 21^ inches in 

 circumference. The European Palinurus vulgaris attains a 

 length of 18 inches, also without including the antenna?, 



1 H. Woodward, Transactions of the Palceontoqranliical Society, 

 1866, p. 42. 



