118 A HISTORY OF RECENT CRUSTACEA 
is pleasant to see how creatures comparatively feeble may 
sometimes find security in stations the most unpromising 
and the most exposed. The whole tribe of the Oxyrrhyn- 
cha are indeed often placed at the head of all the Crustacea 
in honour of the ready wit and resource which so many 
of them display. 
Scyramathia Carpenteri (Norman) is a remarkable crab 
first observed on the Porcupine expedition in the Channel 
between the Fiiré and Shetland Isles. It was afterwards 
obtained abundantly by the Travailleur from great depths 
in the Bay of Biscay, and again the Norwegian North- 
Atlantic expedition trawled it from a depth of 220 fathoms 
about twenty miles off the west coast of Norway. 
According to the description of it by Professor Sars, 
‘the whole surface of the body is invested, as it were, with 
a dense, felt-like covering, which, on closer inspection, is 
found to consist of two different kinds of cutaneous ap- 
pendages. Invermost, crowded together, are observed 
numerous small tuberculiform excrescences, which, at the 
first glance, may he readily taken for granulations on the 
skeleton of the skin, but, after a closer examination, are 
seen to be of a totally different character, since they have 
not only a soft consistence, but admit of being scraped off 
with the greatest facility. On treating these protuber- 
ances with a solution of potash, they are found to be 
true cutaneous vesicles or capsules, that, with a broad 
basis, are attached to the skeleton of the skin and sup- 
ported in the middle by a slender chitinous-like rod, of 
which the point projects more or less distinctly forward 
from the top. Between these peculiar cutaneous appen- 
dages, and projecting considerably beyond them, are short 
and comparatively stiff hairs, somewhat unguiform at the 
extremity, and crowded together, in particular on the 
anterior part of the dorsal surface of the carapace, which 
thus acquires a velvety appearance.’ 
The rostrum also is highly characteristic. It is divided 
from the base into two straight, strongly divergent, branches, 
about half as long as the carapace. ‘They are cylindrical 
at the base, but taper gradually to a dagger-like point, and 
