A HISTORY OF KENT 



tips of the claws, as the photograph clearly shows, are covered with stiff 

 hair or bristles, brown at the base, tipped with crimson, the eyes dark 

 indigo blue. The length of the specimen over all is 6 inches ; from 

 snout to tip of tail 3^ inches; length of claws from socket to tip, 

 3I inches ; greatest width across the carapace, i| inches. The only 

 crustacean which I can find mentioned in the books at my disposal 

 which is at all likely to answer to the specimen in my possession is the 

 painted squat lobster {Galathea strigosd). It is, however, only just 

 mentioned ; there is no description nor illustration of it, and as I have 

 never seen a specimen, I am unable to confirm or refute the theory. 

 Against the idea of its being a lobster are the facts of its size, its colour, 

 its having only three pairs of legs — lobsters and nearly all crabs have 

 four ; the Japanese porcupine crab (Lithodes hystrix) is among the 

 notable exceptions to the rule — and the long slender claws covered with 

 hair at the tips. The relative size of the cephalothorax and the abdomen 

 seem to point to its being a connecting link between the long-tailed and 

 short-tailed crustaceans.' 



As there are five British species of Galathea^ it is fortunate that 

 Mr. Hussey gave particulars of size and colour and a trustworthy 

 portrait by which his felicitous 'theory' as to the name of the species 

 can be fully confirmed. His inference from the fishermen's ignorance 

 is more open to question, since ignorance as a rule is ' fairly strong 

 evidence ' of nothing but its own innocent self. As already explained, 

 the last pair of legs, fifth or fourth according as the chelipeds are or are 

 not reckoned in the series, are not wanting in these crustaceans. They 

 are very slight and often doubled away within the branchial cavity so 

 that they escape notice. The Japanese porcupine crab, now known as 

 Acantholithus histrix (de Haan), has also its full complement of legs. 

 According to the most modern view, the lobsters do indeed lead up to 

 these Macrura anomala and also to the Brachyura, but through two 

 separate lines of evolution, not as was formerly thought through the 

 former to the latter. For distinguishing G. strigosa, which Adam White 

 calls the common plated lobster, from G. sqimmifera, which he calls 

 Montagu's plated lobster,' it should be noticed that the latter has nine 

 spines to the rostrum, and the former has seven, the foremost of these 

 seven being much more advanced than the foremost of the nine. 

 G. strigosa is much the larger with the hands of its chelipeds more 

 spinose, and with the third joint of its outer maxillipeds longer than the 

 fourth, while in the other species that relation of length is reversed. 



In the great assemblage of the normal Macrura Kent is sparsely 

 represented, though the few species it can claim are distributed among 

 several families. The list may properly be headed by the common 

 lobster, Astacus gammarus (Linn.), and the Norway lobster, Nephrops 

 mrvegiciis (Linn.), both belonging to the family Nephropsidae. The 

 former is no doubt intended by Ireland in his history of Kent, when he 

 says, ' The native Milton oysters are superior to any others, as well as 



' Popular History of British Crustacea, p. 87. 

 246 



