CHAPTER III 



SEA-SCOKPIONS 



" And some rin up the hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to 

 pieces wi' hammers like sae many road-makers run daft. They say 'tis to see 

 how the warld was made." Scott, St. Bonan's Well. 



OUR first group of monsters is taken from a tribe of armed 

 warriors that lived in the seas of a very ancient period in the 

 world's history. Like the crabs and lobsters inhabiting the 

 coasts of Britain, they possessed a coat of armour, and jointed 

 bodies, supplied with limbs for crawling, swimming, or seizing 

 their prey. They were giants in their day, far eclipsing in size 

 any of their relations that have lived on to the present time. 

 Some of them, such as the Pterygotus (Fig. 6, p. 51), attained a 

 length of nearly six feet. 



There are no living creatures quite like them. Certainly they 

 are not true lobsters, and yet we may consider them to be first 

 or second cousins of those ten-footed crustaceans J of the present 

 day lobsters, crabs, and shrimps, so welcome on the tables of 

 both rich and poor. Some naturalists say that their nearest 

 relations at the present day are the king-crabs inhabiting the 

 China seas and the east coast of North America; and there cer- 

 tainly are some points of resemblance between them. Others say 



1 Crustaceans are a class of jointed creatures (articulate animals), possessing 

 a hard shell or crust (Lat. crusta), which they cast periodically. They all 

 breathe by gills. 



