18 A HISTORY OF RECENT CRUSTACEA 



live on land or in shallow waters, or on the coast, and of 

 those specimens which are brought to shore either as or in 

 connection with articles of food, the student may obtain a 

 thoroughly representative collection. Closely as all the 

 easily accessible localities and resources have been already 

 searched and examined, even from among them he will 

 find it still possible to add new species to the long roll of 

 those hitherto known. In many of the forms that are 

 common and abundant, and that have long been familiar 

 to science, he may, by diligent observation, find features 

 of great interest that have heretofore escaped notice. One 

 discovery he will almost certainly make, that the objects 

 of his study do not deserve the epithets of contempt and 

 disgust so freely lavished upon them by the ignorant. At 

 every step he will be increasingly charmed by the striking 

 characters which different species exhibit, by the delicate 

 grace or the intricate mechanism of the separate parts, and 

 by the marvellously varied adaptation of the different or- 

 ganisms to their diverse modes of life. 



It is, however, in the waters of the ocean, from the 

 surface down to the abyssal depths, that the vast majority 

 of the Crustacea are to be found. Of the lower limits of 

 the so-called bathymetrical distribution a good general 

 idea may be formed from the results of the dredging and 

 trawling carried on by the Challenger, during a voyage 

 of nearly seventy thousand miles. Of the Brachyura 

 indeed, only a single specimen of a single species was 

 taken so low down as 1,875 fathoms. Mr. Miers, who 

 named it Efhnsn (Ethiisind) challenger i^ says : ' This is the 

 greatest depth at which any Brachyurous crustacean was 

 taken by the expedition, and also, I believe, the greatest 

 hitherto recorded for any species of crab.' It was not, 

 perhaps, to be expected that members of the highest order 

 in the class would either need or condescend to penetrate 

 into the very, lowest regions, where light and heat and 

 vegetation, not to speak of cheerful society, must at the 

 best be very scanty and extremely scarce. The very genus 

 Ethusa^ with its sub-genus or neighbouring genus Ethu- 

 slna^ seems to apologise for frequenting levels beneath its 



