CHAPTER II. 



SEA-SCORPIONS. 



"And some rin up the hill and down dale, knapping the chucky slancs to 

 pieces wi' hammers like sae many road-makers run daft. They say 'tis to see 

 how the warld was made." St. Ronaifs Well, 



OUR first group of monsters is taken from a tribe of armed 

 warriors that lived in the seas of a very ancient period in the 

 world's history. Like the crabs and lobsters inhabiting the coasts 

 of Britain, they possessed a coat of armour, and jointed bodies, 

 supplied with limbs for crawling, swimming, or seizing their prey. 

 They were giants in their day, far eclipsing in size any of their 

 relations that have lived on to the present time. Some of them, 

 such as the Pterygotus (Fig. i, p. 26), attained a length of nearly 

 six feet. They belonged to the humbler ranks of life, and, if now 

 living, would without doubt be assigned, by fishmongers ignorant 

 of natural history, to that vague category of " shell-fish " in which 

 they include crabs, lobsters, mussels, etc. 



These lobster-like creatures, though claiming no relationship 

 with the higher ranks of animals, may well engage our attention, 

 not only for their great size, but also for their strange build. 



There are no living creatures quite like them. Certainly they 

 are not true lobsters, and yet we may consider them to be first 

 or second cousins of those ten-footed crustaceans 1 of the present 



1 Crustaceans are a class of jointed creatures (articulate animals), possess- 

 ing a hard shell or cru:t (Lat crusta), which they cast periodically. They 

 all breathe by gills. 



