28 A HISTOEY OF EECENT CRUSTACEA 



which are sometimes considerably longer than the animal's 

 body. The common lobster, though less bulky in the 

 trunk and with more slender antennas, attains an equal 

 length, or by inclusion of its long and powerful claws 

 might claim in this respect far to exceed the weak-limbed 

 Falinurus. There is an Australian crayfish, Astacopsis 

 serratus (Shaw), from ten to twenty inches long, and 

 weighing some pounds, which makes a fine show when 

 compared with the much more modest dimensions of the 

 English crayfish. In the same way Leander serratus (Pen- 

 nant), the common prawn of British markets, is humbled 

 by contrast with Palcemon carcimis, the river prawn of the 

 West Indies and Guatemala, of Surinam and the Ganges, 

 with its lobster-like size of twelve inches long. Palcemon 

 lar, from the Pacific Islands and India, exaggerates one of 

 the characteristics of the genus to which it belongs, inas- 

 much as a male specimen five inches in length will have the 

 second pair of legs nearly eight inches long — much longer, 

 therefore, than the body which carries them. The Her- 

 mit Crabs appear to attain their maximum at about eight 

 inches, a length not inconsiderable, seeing that it has to 

 be accommodated to the vacant shell of a univalve mollusc. 

 One, however, of their near kindred, Lithodes camschatica 

 (Tilesius), has sometimes a span of four feet. This makes 

 its hermitage not in the shell of a mollusc, but in some 

 cranny of the rocks. From this fastness it takes vengeance 

 on the crab-eating octopus, and is itself so firmly lodged 

 that it cannot easily be dragged out, except in fragments. 

 Of shrimps, Pasiphcea princeps (S. I. Smith), dredged by 

 the Albatross in 1883, may be accepted as the leader, 

 seeing that it is not only far larger than any of its own 

 genus hitherto known, but by its length of more than 

 eight inches and a half, it exceeds all examples of kindred 

 gene I a. 



Among the Schizopoda the more familiar species are 

 quite the reverse of bulky. A specimen of Gnathophausia 

 ingens (Dohrn), measuring from the tip of the rostrum to 

 the extremity of the telson or tail 157 millimetres, or 

 G^ inches, is spoken of as possessing ' a truly gigantic size 



