THE EATABLE SHRIMP 225 



legion. The hind margin of the carapace is overlapped at 

 the sides by the first segment of the pleon ; in the rear the 

 pleon is laterally compressed. The eye-stalks are short 

 and one-jointed. The first antennae have two flagella, the 

 second have a' large scale, and all the joints of the pedun- 

 cle free. The mandibles are without a cutting edge, and 

 have no ' palp.' The second maxillipeds end in a rudi- 

 mentary sixth joint, and the third pair have neither the 

 sixth nor the seventh joint. The second and third pairs 

 of trunk-legs are slender, the others robust. The pleo- 

 pods are two-branched, the swimming-fan well developed. 

 This family at present contains some eight or nine 

 genera, in most of which the second pair of trunk-legs are 

 more or less chelate, but in Sabinea, Owen, 1835, they are 

 simple, and in Paracrangon, Dana, 1852, this pair of legs 

 is completely obsolete. 



Crangon, Fabricius, 1798, the parent genus, has the 

 carapace and minute rostrum dorsally flattened. The type 

 species, Crangon vulgaris (Linn.), is abundant on the sandy 

 shores of Great Britain. So also in the Mediterranean 

 and on the shores of Europe at large, in the seas of Japan, 

 on the East and West Coasts of North America, in short 

 over all the northern hemisphere this species seems to 

 make itself at home wherever there is a plentiful supply of 

 fine sand. Apparently in the zoological ideas of many 

 persons it is not only the typical shrimp, the shrimp par 

 excellence, but the only shrimp. At least the information 

 that there is more than one species of shrimp, in fact that 

 there are several or indeed a rather large number of species, 

 often excites surprise not always wholly unmingled with 

 scepticism. Familiar also as the eatable shrimp is to 

 every one, vague notions sometimes prevail as to its ana- 

 tomical structure. A very intelligent student, on being 

 told that the eyes were stalked, candidly confessed to 

 having always thought that this appearance was due to 

 their having been forced out of the head by boiling. The 

 colour of the species is said to vary much with the ground 

 it inhabits, but specimens that live in shallow waters are 

 of a speckled grey which harmonises well with the wet 



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