SO HISTORY OF BRITISH CRUSTACEA. 



claws, which when he folds them up lie in the same plane 

 with his shell, and fit neatly into its edges. Compact little 

 rogue that he is, made especially for sidling in and out of 

 cracks and crannies, he carries with him such an apparatus 

 of combs and brushes as Isidor or Moris never dreamed of; 

 with which he sweeps out of the sea-water at every moment 

 shoals of minute animalcules, and sucks them into his tiny 

 mouth.'" 



Mr. Gosse, in his ' Aquarium ' (p. 47), has given some 

 interesting observations on the habits and structure of this 

 little Crab, whose usual abode is in the crannies and clefts 

 of rocky ledges, and beneath stones which lie at the verge 

 of low-water. He says, " As soon as it is dropped into the 

 Aquarium, it throws out its abdomen or tail, and gives seve- 

 ral smart flaps with it, which shoot it along diagonally back- 

 wards, as if to say, ' Though you see I am a Crab, I have 

 learned to behave myself in some things like my courtly 

 cousins, the Lobster family/ But he is not much of a 

 swimmer ; the flaps merely bring him to the bottom slant- 

 wise, instead of perpendicularly, whence he does not rise 

 again. You turn your head away, and on looking again 

 yon cannot think what is become of your Broad-claw ! I 

 have put in half-a-dozen at a time, and have been asto- 



