CRABS AND LOBSTERS. 155 



thicker, though much longer, than the others. On that account 

 he is not greatly esteemed as merchandise, but his flesh 

 is far sweeter than that of the Great Crab. He is a creature 

 of slow and languid habit, who takes as much pains with the 

 " get up " of his carapace as a lady does with her hair or her 

 bonnet. His notion is to make it look like a rough piece of 

 rock, with its characteristic flora and fauna, and to this end 

 he takes cuttings of plants, sponges, ascidians, and anemones, 

 and giving them a lick with his lips, as though they were 

 postage stamps, he carefully sticks them in the valleys between 

 the spines and tubercles on his back, adjusting them by means 

 of his conveniently long arms. The seeker after zoophytic 

 treasures might look in many a worse place for them than on 

 the Gabrick's back. 



We have now done as much as possible with the crabs of 

 the rocky shore, and must shift our ground for a while to the 

 flat sands that run out from the upper part of the bay, and 

 taking advantage of the very lowest tides, must go, armed with 

 trowel or spade, to dig in the treacherous sands. Many things 

 we may find other than those we came specially to seek, and 

 those we specially want just now may not come to light ; still it 

 is in the sand we shall find the Masked Crab and the Angular 

 Crab, if they occur in the district. 



The Masked-crab (Corystes cassivelaunus] has a carapace 

 that is much longer than it is broad, almost elliptical in out- 

 line, and so marked with depressions that some specimens 

 present a remarkable likeness to a human face, more especially 

 so if the crab is held in a way that will accentuate the promi- 

 nences by casting small shadows. It is prettily coloured with 

 yellow and red. The male has deeper tints than the female, 

 and his pincer-legs are much longer than hers. Their habit 

 is to burrow into the sand in rather deep water, and lie buried, 

 with only the tips of their long antennae at the surface. These 

 antennas are furnished with a double row of hairs throughout 

 their length, and by placing the antennae so close together that 



