190 LIFE BY THE SEASHORE. 



other British genus. The masked crab is not very often 

 found between tide-marks, as it usually lives in sand in 

 fairly deep water, but it is a species very commonly cast 

 upon the shore after storms, and may often be found even 

 in summer among the dried masses of wreckage at high- 

 tide mark. The not very appropriate English name was 

 given to it by Bell because of the fact that the regions of 

 the carapace are very distinctly marked, and their grooves 

 are so arranged as to form a somewhat indistinct outline 

 of a man's face. This is only apparent in fresh specimens, 

 and at times is considerably more like a lion than a man. 

 Fresh specimens are pale red in colour, but the colour soon 

 fades to bluish white. In length the carapace usually 

 measures rather over an inch, and it is one-third longer than 

 broad. The sexes are easily distinguished, for while in the 

 male the chelipeds are twice as long as the body, in the 

 female they are of the same length. Further, as in the true 

 crabs, there is a fusion of abdominal segments in the male, 

 so that while the abdomen of the female has several pieces, 

 that of the male only appears to have five. As in all the 

 remaining Decapods, the abdomen is kept permanently 

 flexed beneath the carapace, is very small, and without 

 trace of tail fin; it is broader in the female than in the 

 male, and it bears four pairs of egg-carrying appendages, 

 as compared with the two pairs of small rods in the male. 

 The eyes are placed in orbits into which they can be 

 retracted. In all these respects Conjstes resembles the true 

 crabs; in the following it resembles the long-tailed or 

 anomalous forms which we have just been considering, or 

 is peculiar. 



The antennae are long, and are supported on long, flexible 

 stalks, whose three joints are all freely movable and inserted 

 at such angles as to bring the two antennae very close to 

 one another. They are placed beneath the eyes, the orbits 

 of which would be widely open below were it not for the 

 basal joint of the antennal peduncle. The third maxilli- 

 pedes are long and narrow, but in the reduced size and 

 method of insertion of the three terminal joints they recall 

 those of true crabs. The first two segments of the abdomen 

 are visible on the dorsal surface, and the first is much better 

 developed than in crabs, in which it is more or less reduced. 



