118 A HISTORY OF RECENT CRUSTACEA 



is pleasant to see how creatures comparatively feeble may 

 sometimes find security in stations the most unpromising 

 and the most exposed. The whole tribe of the Oxyrrhyn- 

 cha are indeed often placed at the head of all the Crustacea 

 in honour of the ready wit and resource which so many 

 of them display. 



Scyramathia Carpenteri (Norman) is a remarkable crab 

 first observed on the Porcupine expedition in the Channel 

 between the Faro and Shetland Isles. It was afterwards 

 obtained abundantly by the Travailleur from great depths 

 in the Bay of Biscay, and again the Norwegian North- 

 Atlantic expedition trawled it from a depth of 220 fathoms 

 about twenty miles off the west coast of Norway. 



According to the description of it by Professor Sars, 

 ' the whole surface of the body is invested, as it were, with 

 a dense, felt-like covering, which, on closer inspection, is 

 found to consist of two different kinds of cutaneous ap- 

 pendages. Innermost, crowded together, are observed 

 numerous small tuberculiform excrescences, which, at the 

 first glance, may be readily taken for granulations on the 

 skeleton of the skin, but, after a closer examination, are 

 seen to be of a totally different character, since they have 

 not only a soft consistence, but admit of being scraped off 

 with the greatest facility. On treating these protuber- 

 ances with a solution, of potash, they are found to be 

 true cutaneous vesicles or capsules, that, with a broad 

 basis, are attached to the skeleton of the skin and sup- 

 ported in the middle by a slender chitinous-like rod, of 

 which the point projects more or less distinctly forward 

 from the top. Between these peculiar cutaneous appen- 

 dages, and projecting considerably beyond them, are short 

 and comparatively stiff hairs, somewhat unguiform at the 

 extremity, and crowded together, in particular on the 

 anterior part of the dorsal surface of the carapace, which 

 thus acquires a velvety appearance.' 



The rostrum also is highly characteristic. It is divided 

 from the base into two straight, strongly divergent, branches, 

 about half as long as the carapace. They are cylindrical 

 at the base, but taper gradually to a dagger-like point, and 



