260 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
crustaceans are not likely to be extirpated, nor to disappoint 
the hopes of their gastronomical admirers for many an age to 
come. 
When we hear of fishes wandering about on the dry land, we 
cannot wonder that some insects and arachnidans should depart 
so strangely from the usual habits of their class as to select 
the sea for their habitation. 
“There is a minute marine spider,” says Mr. Gosse, “ very 
common on most parts of the coast, crawling sluggishly upon 
the smaller sea-weeds, which seems, from its lack of centralisa- 
tion, to realise our infant ideas of Mr. Nobody; but zoologists 
have designated him as Nymphon gracile. Widely different 
from the spiders of terra firma, in which an abdomen some ten 
times as bulky as all the rest of the animal put together is the 
most characteristic feature, the belly of our marine friend is re- 
duced to an atom not so big as a single joint of one of his 
eight lees; though his thorax is more considerable, this is little 
more than the extended line formed by the successive points of 
union of the said legs. These latter, on the other hand, are 
long, stout, well-armed, and many-jointed; but, apparently 
from the lack of the centralising principle, they are moved 
heavily, sprawled hither and thither, and dragged about like 
the limbs of an unfortunate who is afflicted with the gout.” 
This strange little creature has four eyes gleaming like diamonds, 
respires by the skin, and its stomach is prolonged into each of 
its eight legs, which are thus made the seats of digestion. Mr. 
Nobody and his marine relations, some of which also attach 
themselves to fishes, form the smail group of the Pycnogonida 
(rucvos, frequent; yovv, knee) thus named from their many- 
jointed legs. 
It is a well-known fact that the winds will sometimes waft 
butterflies to an immense distance from the shore. Thus 
Acherontia atropos has been found on the Atlantic a thousand 
miles from the nearest land; and while Mr. Darwin was in the 
bay of San Blas, in Patagonia, he saw thousands of butterflies 
hovering over the sea as far as the eye could reach. These 
insects, of course, are nothing but stray wanderers on an alien 
and hostile element; but Leptopus longipes, a species of 
