A WIDE STRETCH 27 
The remains make it probable that some of them attained 
a length of six feet and a breadth at the widest part of the 
body of nearly two feet. The sculpture on the carapace, 
like conventional feathers drawn by some old Assyrian 
artist, is thought to have led the Scotch quarrymen to 
call these giant fossils by the quaint name of Seraphim.! 
Great as their size was, their organisation would have 
little fitted them to cope with an armed knight. Their 
nearest living allies belong to the genus Limulus, in which 
the eastern King Crab, Limulus moluccanus, attains a 
breadth of a foot by a length of two feet, although, to be 
sure, nearly one half of the length consists only of a great 
caudal spine. Among the Brachyura, Japan possesses a 
species which is certainly from one point of view a rival 
in size to the largest Pterygotus, and may almost seem to 
justify the old mythical narratives, for Macrocheira Kdmpferi, 
de Haan, as a specimen in the British Museum shows, can 
span eight feet, and it is said that sometimes even eleven 
feet are within the compass of the outstretched arms ot 
the male. But portentous as we must allow these dimen- 
sions to be, the animal is after all only a spider crab, with 
comparatively weak and spindly legs, and a carapace 
which seldom if ever exceeds twelve inches in either 
length or breadth. 
The fossil Trilobites, which compose the third order of 
the Gigantostraca, include indeed many species of incon- 
siderable size, but they are also represented by forms such 
as Asaphus tyrannus, Murchison, about a foot long, and 
others in the genus Paradoxides, measuring twenty-one 
inches. 
Among the spiny lobsters or crawfish, a New Zealand 
species, Palinwrus tumidus, has recently been described by 
Mr. T. W. Kirk as measuring twenty-four inches from the 
tip of the beak to the end of the tail, and as having the 
carapace very much swollen, and measuring 214 inches in 
circumference. The Huropean Palinurus vulgaris attains a 
length of 18 inches, also without including the antenne, 
'H. Woodward, Transactions of the Paleontographical Society, 
1866, p. 42. 
