164 THE PEAWNS. 



it ; he was so different from the poor, houseless vaga- 

 bond with a drivelling tail, that one had seen miserably 

 crawling about a moment before : he looked right up 

 in your face, and said, as plainly as looks can speak, 

 ' How d'ye do ? here I am, quite at home already/ 

 I never saw it without laughing." 



THE COMMON PKAWN, AND THE BULLHEAD PRAWN. 



The Prawns are particularly pleasing inhabitants 

 of the Aquarium. There is a certain lightness in the 

 slender filiform appendages of the head, which are 

 continually thrown into the most graceful curves, that 

 resembles in character " the light tracery of ropes and 

 spars " so much admired in a trimly rigged ship. 

 Their bodies are so pellucid that a lady who was this 

 moment looking at the Tank compared them to ghosts, 

 and their smooth gliding movements aid the similitude. 

 The beautiful colours which adorn them I have de- 

 scribed elsewhere, and shall merely here say that the 

 fine contrasts of the black-margined lines of pale 

 yellow with the pellucid grey of the ground, show 

 well as the animals rest on the dark stones. The two 

 species (P. serratus and P. squilla) are so closely alike 

 in their colours and in the distribution of these, that 

 it is only by minute examination and comparison that 

 we can determine what is characteristic of each. The 

 most obvious distinction is, that in the former the 

 outer tail-plate has a yellow line, the intermediate one 

 no spot or rarely a minute speck ; the middle plate 

 two parallel specks also minute. In P. squilla each 

 plate has a roundish or squarish spot of yellow, all 



