DEEP-SEA LOBSTERS 147 



crustaceans. Of these two classes of animals there 

 were many hundreds of specimens, representing twenty- 

 three different species of fishes, and twenty - nine 

 different species of Crustacea. Among the former 

 there were no less than four distinct kinds of frog- 

 fishes, those grotesque monsters, of which the sea- 

 devil or fishing-frog i^Lophms piscatoritts) of European 

 seas is the type, who lie in wait at the bottom of the 

 sea with their enormous trap-like mouths agape, while 

 they lure their prey, after the manner of anglers, by 

 the play of one of their dorsal fin - rays, the tip of 

 which is modified to resemble a bait. 



Among the crustaceans there were many specimens 

 of Nephrops thomsoni, a true lobster, very little 

 different from the spiny lobster {^Nephrops norwegica) 

 of the North Atlantic ; some of them were females 

 with eggs attached, the eggs containing embryos 

 whose growth was sufficiently far advanced to show 

 that in this species, as in several other members of 

 the lobster family, the newly-hatched young resembles 

 the parent in possessing the full number of appendages. 

 Though Neph'Ops thomsoni itself is of a pink colour, 

 its embryos, as seen in the egg, are dark blue. Among 

 other acquisitions worthy of special notice, there were 

 some fine specimens of a primitive kind of crab [^Homola 

 megalops), belonging to a genus which, for many years, 

 was supposed to be confined to the Mediterranean Sea 

 and North Atlantic, but which we now know to be 



