257 



CHAP. XVIII. 



s 



ARTICULATA CRABS. 



Structure. Spider-Crab and various other Species. Pagurus, 

 Habits and Structure, &c. Zoea. 



WHEN the aged priest of Apollo found his prayers 

 for the liberation of his fair daughter rejected by 

 Agamemnon, he betook himself, the poet tells 

 us, to the shores of the loud resounding sea, and 

 seeking an unfrequented place poured forth his 

 supplications to the Silver Bow-bearer. And 

 truly no locality is more suited to devotion, 

 whether in grief or gladness, than the shores of 

 the great deep. Nowhere do we find so much to 

 awaken those sublime emotions which are so 

 closely allied to all true devotion. 



And it may be affirmed that of all men the dili- 

 gent student of nature is best able to decipher and 

 understand the language with which the sea-shore 

 addresses both the intellectual and the moral fa- 

 culties and powers of the soul. What a world of 

 wonders does not the sea-shore unfold to him, all 

 but invisible although they be to other and common 

 eyes ! Even if he confine himself to an examina- 

 tion of the structure, the forms, the habits of the 

 Crustacea alone, what a fund of strange and in- 

 teresting knowledge awaits him ; and what unde- 



