A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



' great spider-crab/ and in fact, by a possible stretch of sixteen inches 

 between the tips of the longest legs of a very large specimen, it outpaces 

 all the other English ' spiders,' with the important exception of the very 

 much larger but less spidery-looking Maia squinado. The pleon is seven- 

 segmented in both sexes, and ends broadly in both. The triangular front 

 or rostrum projecting beyond the orbits is divided into two parts by a 

 linear interval. The carapace is much broader in the rear than anteriorly, 

 and has many tubercles and uncinate hairs, the importance of which has 

 now been often explained in regard to the crabs of this group in general. 

 They use these pegs and hooks for fastening upon themselves the rags 

 and tags and purple or otherwise-coloured shreds of algs and zoophytes, 

 having a complete power of dressing or undressing themselves, or, to put 

 it in another way, of cultivating and arranging botanical and zoological 

 gardens on their own backs. 



The other species is Macropodia rostrata (Linn.), described by Bell 

 under the synonym '■ Stenorynchus phalangium'' (Pennant). In the genus 

 Macropodia (long-legs) the pleon has the last two segments soldered to- 

 gether, and it thus becomes six-segmented in both sexes. The species 

 mentioned, though not very large, has, in accord with the generic name, 

 very long legs, for which reason Pennant compared it to a phalan- 

 gium or ' harvestman.' The alternative Latin names differ much more 

 in sound than in sense, since the former signifies ' long legs with a beak,' 

 and the latter ' narrow beak with long legs.' All the legs except the 

 chelipeds are extremely slender. The owner does not use them for rapid 

 movement, being of the lethargic sedentary habit common in its 

 costuming tribe. In spite, however, of its disguises and its retiring 

 disposition, fishes are able to find it out and fill their stomachs with it.^ 



Turning now to the Macrura, or long-tailed malacostracans, out of 

 the five divisions of the tribe Anomala we shall find three represented in 

 our records, and we may take for granted that a fourth, containing the 

 hermit-crabs, is more or less abundant here, as on every other coast pro- 

 vided with univalve moUusca. Any one who has drawn a curly-tailed 

 ' hermit ' out of his borrowed shell will readily understand that among 

 lobsters and prawns its position is rather anomalous. In the other divi- 

 sions the anomaly is not always quite so obvious, for some have a 

 decidedly lobster-like appearance. On the other hand, many might be 

 mistaken by the uninitiated for genuine crabs. Especially is this the 

 case with the first to be mentioned. In The Perlustrations of Great Tar- 

 mouth and Gorleston and Southtoivn, by Charles John Palmer, F.S.A., it is 

 stated that 'in 1869 there was brought on shore a specimen of the 

 Liithodes Arctic a ^ or Arctic crab, which was forwarded to Mr. Buckland." 

 This, which is more correctly called Lithodes maia (Linn.), and is known 

 in English as the northern stone-crab, is seldom taken far to the south, 

 though species of the same genus are known from tropical waters and 

 the Strait of Magellan. It is a large species, very spiky, with spikes on 



' Popular History of British Crustacea ^ p. 22. * British Stalk-eyed Crustacea, p. 5. 



* Vol. iii. p. 242, 1875. 



186 



