356 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



tennee three or four times the animal's length; 

 transparent amphipods who, paradoxically, found 

 their strength in fragility; an elegant amethys- 

 tine crab whose lilac-grey eyes were set at the end 

 of long flexible stalks that enabled the eye to be 

 swung in an arc with a radius of half the body 

 length, above or before the creature, periscope fash- 

 ion; a weird, eyeless, claw-footed Willemoesia that 

 has curiously retained the characteristics of his 

 long vanished kin of the ancient Triassic seas; a 

 new species of Uroptychus, with exquisitely sculp- 

 tered body of pearly safrano pink and queer long 

 claws that dredge the ocean floor in search of food ; 

 hundreds of swift Bentliesicymus, vivid crimson 

 slashed with spectrum blue; an apparently head- 

 less, multispined orange amphipod — a miniature 

 impersonation of some dread prehistoric monster; 

 countless scarlet Nematocarcinus whose fantas- 

 tically long legs were so shadow-thin, one half- 

 expected them to ballet Stevenson's nursery song; 

 a small, globular, porcupinish Eryonicus, who had 

 solved the problem of living in the great depths, 

 where the pressure is more than two thousand 

 pounds to the square inch, by evolving a spherical 

 form and a flexible leathery coat in place of the 

 usual rigid armor worn by his kind; a delicate 

 ivory-hued Paribaccus tinted with sea-foam green, 

 seemingly as fragile as a bas-relief on a bubble, yet 

 encompassing with its shadowy form the multi- 

 plicity of segments and the complex nervous, cir- 

 culatory, respiratory and other systems that co- 

 ordinate to conduct the business of living ; a group 



