SEA-SCORPIONS. 
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scorpions. What curious animals they must have been, using 
the same limbs for walking, holding their prey, and eating ! 
Look at the broad plates at the base of the oar -like limbs, or 
appendages, with their tooth -like edges. These are the plates 
found by Hugh Miller’s quarrymen, and compared by them to 
the wings of seraphim. You will easily perceive that by a back- 
ward and forward movement, they would perform the office of 
teeth and jaws, while the long antennas with their nippers — 
helped by the other and smaller appendages — held the unfortunate 
victim in a relentless grasp. And even these smaller limbs, you 
will see from the figure, had their first joints, near the mouth, 
provided with toothed edges like a saw. 
With regard to the habits of Sea-scorpions, it would not be 
altogether safe to conclude that, because in so many ways 
they resembled king-crabs, they therefore had the same habit 
of burrowing into the soft muddy or sandy bed of the sea, as 
some authorities have supposed. Seeing that there is a difference 
of opinion on this subject, the author consulted Dr. Woodward on 
the question, and he said he thought it unlikely, seeing that, in 
some of them, such as the Pterygotus, the eyes are placed on the 
margin of the head-shield ; for it would hardly care to rub its 
eyes with sand. Whether it chose at times to bury its long body 
in the sand by a process of wriggling backwards, as certain 
modern crustaceans do, we may consider to be an open question. 
If only Sea-scorpions had not unfortunately died out, how 
interesting it would be to watch them alive, and to see exactly 
what use they would make of their long bodies, tail-flaps, and 
tail-spikes ! Were they nocturnal in their habits, wandering 
about by night, and taking their rest by day ? Such questions, 
we fear, can never be answered. But their large eyes would have 
been able to collect a great deal of light when the moon and stars 
feebly illumined the shallower waters of the seas of Old Red 
Sandstone times ; and so there is nothing to contradict the idea. 
Now, it is an interesting fact that young crabs, soon after they 
