PAL^MON. 
129 
open pincers ready to seize, and feet and expanded tail pre- 
pared in a twinkling to dart backward on the least alarm. 
Look then at his cephalo-thorax , or what yon would per- 
haps call the head, the cylindrical shield that you would 
pick off as the first essay towards eating him. Its ground- 
colour is a greenish-grey, but so translucent that we can 
hardiy assign any hue-proper to it; this is marked with 
several stripes of rich deep brown, running longitudinally, 
each stripe being edged with buff. Then the body, or more 
correctly the abdomen , is marked with about a dozen stripes 
of similar colour, but set transversely, girding the segments 
round with a series of dark lines; and the last segment 
before the setting on of the tail-fins has three lines running 
lengthwise again. Now we come to the tail. But here 
| the pen fails ; only the pencil could convey an adequate 
idea of this exquisitely painted organ. The four oval plates 
j that play over each other, and that form a broad and power- 
ful fin when expanded, are bordered with a pale red band; 
the outer pair have in the centre a red spot, the inner pair 
a streak of the same hue ; each plate has near its extre- 
mity a spot of cream white (much larger on the outer 
pair), made more conspicuous by being broadly margined 
by reddish-brown. Finally, the plates are studded all over 
