CHAPTER III 
SEA-SCOKPIONS 
“ And some rin up the hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to ’ 
pieces wi’ hammers like sae many road-makers run daft. They say ’tis to see i 
how the warld was made.” — Scott, 8t. Honan’s Well. ! 
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Our first group of monsters is taken from a tribe of armed j 
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warriors that lived in the seas of a very ancient period in the i' 
world’s history. Like the crabs and lobsters inhabiting the j 
coasts of Britain, they possessed a coat of armour, and jointed { 
bodies, supplied with limbs for crawling, swimming, or seizing 
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their prey. They were giants in their day, far eclipsing in size j 
any of their relations that have lived on to the present time. ! 
Some of them, such as the Pterygotus (Fig. 6, p. 51), attained a 
length of nearly six feet. 
There are no living creatures quite like them. Certainly theysb 
are not true lobsters, and yet we may consider them to be first ' 
or second cousins of those ten-footed crustaceans ^ of the present 
day — lobsters, crabs, and shrimps, so welcome on the tables of j 
both rich and poor. Some naturalists say that their nearest ' 
relations at the present day are the king-crabs inhabiting thei 
China seas and the east coast of North America; and there cer-M jj 
tainly are some points of resemblance between them. Others say j f 
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1 Crustaceans are a class of jointed creatures (articulate animals), possessing !■! 
a hard shell or crust (Lat. crusta), which they cast periodically. They all 
breathe by gills. j 
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