ITS STRANGE MANNERS. 381 



weapons of the animal's predatory warfare. They 

 consist of four or five stout joints, each of which is 

 armed on its inferior edge with two rows of long stiff 

 curved spines, set as regularly as the teeth of a comb, 

 the rows divaricating at a rather wide angle. From 

 the sudden clutchings of these organs, I have no 

 doubt that they too are seizing prey ; and very effect- 

 ive implements they must be, for the joints bend 

 down towards each other, and the long rows of spines 

 interlacing must form a secure prison, like a wire-cage, 

 out of which the jaws probably take the victim, when 

 the bending in of the antennae has delivered it to 

 the mouth. 



But these well-furnished animals are not satisfied 

 with fishing merely at one station. As I have said 

 above, they climb nimbly and eagerly to and fro, 

 insinuating themselves among the branches, and 

 dragging themselves hither and thither by the twigs. 

 On a straight surface, as when marching (the motion 

 is too free and rapid to call it crawling) along the 

 stem of a zoophyte, the creature proceeds by loops, 

 catching hold with the fore limbs, and then bringing 

 up the hinder ones close, the intermediate segments 

 of the thin body forming an arch, exactly as the 

 caterpillars of geometric moths, such as those for 

 example that we see on gooseberry bushes, do. But 

 the action of the Crustacean is much more energetic 

 then that of the Caterpillar. Indeed all its motions 

 strike one as peculiarly full of vigour and energy. 



I have seen the large red species swim, throwing 

 its body into a double curve like the letter S, with the 

 head bent down, and the hind limbs turned back, the 



