THE CRUSTACEANS. 151 



Figuier, " to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages at once audacious and cruel ; 

 barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces 

 scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance." They possess the power 

 of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as 

 they had been before formidable. * 



Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea/* 

 says Lord, "few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, or Zoi : a, as they are 

 sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, 

 and no respectable or fully-matured male or female crab would ever own them as his 

 or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving 

 the name, and a pair of goggle bull's-eyes as of two policemen's lanterns rolled into one, 

 a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little 

 body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be. ... Master Crab's internal 

 economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be 

 disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he 

 possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in 

 matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, 

 where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With 

 such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab's 

 liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft 

 interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other A^iscera are lodged. That 

 well-known delicacy known as the c cream ' or ' fat ' of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The 

 lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the 'dead 

 men's fingers.' The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; 

 and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages 

 by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his 

 shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other 

 feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignifi- 

 cance." 



Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their 

 enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a 

 tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the 

 fact that lobsters " which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, 

 reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service." 

 On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered 

 excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, 

 likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crus- 

 taceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some 

 of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each 

 other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one 



* This account of the crustaceans is derived from the works of Milne-Edwards, Pennant and Bell, Gosse, 

 Couch, Broderip, Rymer Jones and Major Lord, Figuier and Tandon. 



