212 HISTORY OF BRITISH CRUSTACEA. 



are excessively amusing. The middle part of their long 

 body is destitute of limbs, having, instead of legs, two pairs 

 of oval clear vesicles; but the hinder extremity is furnished 

 with three pairs of legs armed with spines and a terminal 

 hooked blade like that already described. -With these hind- 

 most legs the animal takes a firm grasp of the twigs, and 

 rears up into the free water its gaunt skeleton of a body, 

 stretching wide its scythe-like arms, with which it keeps up 

 a seesaw motion, swaying its whole body to and fro. Ever 

 and anon, the blade is shut forcibly upon the grooved haft, 

 and woe be to the unfortunate Infusory or Mite or Rotifer 

 that comes within that grasp ! The whole action, the pos- 

 ture, the figure cf the animal, and the structure of the 

 limb, are so like those of the tropical genus Mantis among 

 insects, which I have watched thus taking its prey in the 

 Southern United States and the West Indies, that I have no 

 doubt passing animals are caught by the Crustacean also in 

 this way, though I have not seen any actually secured. The 

 antennas too, at least the inferior pair, are certainly, I should 

 think, accessory weapons of the animal's predatory warfare. 

 They consist of four or five stout joints, each of which 

 is armed on its inferior edge with two rows of long, stiff, 

 curved spines, set as regularly as the teeth of a comb, the 



