Crangon and Galathea 63 



succeeding pairs acuminate, simple, and progressively stouter backwards ; a 

 stout tooth on hyposternal region, between origins of third pair of chelipeds. 



Abdomen regularly tapering, rounded, and perfectly smooth ; a tooth on 

 sternal surface of second somite in males ; telson long, narrow, triangular, 

 pointed at extremity, slightly flattened above, armed with two short articulated 

 spines on each side, and a series of spines and hairs at extremities. The fourth, 

 fifth, and sixth somites, have their posterior lateral angles dilated backwards, 

 and overlapping the succeeding somite. The second somite has each of its in- 

 ferior angles similarly dilated as rounded lobes. 



Colour pellucid greyish-brown, sprinkled with dots of golden colour and 

 dark- brown ; the posterior pleopods, their scales (side-plates of tail), and tel- 

 son, often broadly tipped and bordered with black. 



Length sometimes exceeds two and a half inches, especially specimens from 

 deep water. 



Habitats, sandy shores and bottoms, up to 25 fjjthoms. 



Habits very active, and easily kept living for mouths in the vivarium. It 

 frequents all the tidal ])ools on our sandy shores, sometimes in myriads, espe- 

 cially in summer and autumn, where thousands often perish, through the dry- 

 ing up and heating of the waters from the sun's influence, as was notably the 

 case at Dublin in 1856, in the months of July and August. Hard frosts, too, 

 sometimes destroy numbers. It likewise frequents rock pools, when these have 

 sandy bottoms, and muddy pools and running streams in slobs, as at Rush and 

 Malahide, where large specimens may be taken. It ascends rivers, passing up 

 into places where, even at high tides, the waters are but slightly brackish, as 

 in the Dodder. In the dredge I have taken it up to 25 fathoms, on clean sandy 

 bottoms generall3\ These specimens, which were of large size, differed only 

 in a greater vividness of colour from shore specimens. It also occurs, but 

 only rarely, in the lobster-pots. 



Localities, all round Ireland. 



In ova from February, and all through summer. Ova purplish, changing, 

 when nearly mature, to a greyish. 



The generic characters of the rostrum and carapace, &c., distinguish it from 

 all the British species, except Steiracrangon Allmanni, from which it may 

 be readily known by the smoothness of the sixth abdominal somite and telson. 



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