188 JULY. 



him but he is begrimed and saturated, so to speak, 

 with the impalpable red mud of which our soil consists, 

 the d&bris of the red sandstone. Yet blame him not. 

 He is more hirsute than a modern swell ; his hands and 

 his face are as hairy as Esau's ; a dense short pile of 

 stiff bristles stands out from all his prominences, and 

 catches and entangles the sediment in the midst of 

 which he loves to riot. I say again, blame him not ; 

 we must not infer that he likes dirt for its own sake, 

 because he gets his living in it, any more than the sweep 

 or the dustman chose his trade because he had a pen- 

 chant for the grime. Nay, dirty as our little flat friend 

 is, he is endowed with organs expressly for the purpose 

 of cleaning himself, and fails not to use them too. On 

 first looking at him you would suppose, comparing him 

 with other Crabs, that he was short of one pair of feet ; 

 yet presently, from a narrow, almost invisible crevice 

 behind, he jerks out two jointed limbs, as slender 

 as bristles, which, however, are each terminated by a 

 tiny two-fingered claw, and are beset throughout 

 their length by stiff short hairs standing out at right 

 angles, like a brush. These feeble limbs are indeed 

 cleansing brushes, with which he keeps certain portions 

 of his person clean, applying them with the greatest ease 

 to the whole surface of the abdomen, and under- side of 

 the carapace or body-shell, while the delicate fingers 



