NUT-CRAB. 233 



radiated animal and the curious zoophyte will also be 

 found congregated together there ; all of them, no 

 doubt, at times mutilated or partly digested, but not 

 unfrequently fresh and complete, as if newly past the 

 voracious jaws." 



Two or three specimens of another curious crab are 

 also in our haul. Unlike the Gonoplax, the little Nut- 

 crab 1 is not by any means conspicuous in a chaotic heap 

 like this ; it requires a sharp eye, and one familiar with 

 the form, to discern him. Eemarkably sluggish, he re- 

 mains motionless ; his tiny limbs are almost concealed 

 under the edges of his shell ; his body is destitute of 

 sharp angles ; its colour is a dull white : in fact the 

 eye might roam over it a dozen times without suppos- 

 ing it anything more than an irregular rubbed quartz 

 pebble. 



Yet when you pick it up, it is a pretty little Crab. 

 The form of the body is unlike that of any other of our 

 genera ; indeed the type of which it is a representative, 

 though largely developed in the tropical and sub-tro- 

 pical seas, scarcely reaches to our shores. Some of the 

 allied species in the hotter parts of the globe, are very 

 curious, such as the Galappa, a crab in which the very 

 short limbs are so closely packed to the body, and so 



1 Ebalia ; a male specimen of E. Bryerii is represented in Plate xxvi., 

 clinging to the stem of an aged tangle, in the upper left-hand corner. 



