that their readers would take more interest in a large crustacean than in a small one. For this reason, no doubt, Olaus Magnus declares that between the Orkneys and the Hebrides there lives a kind of lobster so large and strong that it can catch a swimmer in its claws and squeeze him to death. His picture, as will be seen, represents a bearded man as a mere plaything in the lobster's arms. The human race is avenged in the companion picture, where a lobster twelve feet long is itself being ruthlessly devoured by a 'rhinoceros whale.' Though these myths are many centuries old, they still have an amusing interest to the Anglo-Saxon from having been localised in British waters. It is, however, very extraordinary that at the beginning of the present century a travelled French naturalist of eminence should have accepted a statement little differing from that of Olaus. L. A. G. Bosc in 1802 published his 'Natural History of the Crustacea, containing a Description of them and their Manners,' in the Introduction to which he says:

'It is related that on the coasts of the isles of America, where the crabs are in great profusion, they engage during the pairing season in desperate conflicts, which often result in the death of numerous individuals, and always in the loss of a great many of their limbs. It does not appear that the Crustacea of Europe have this custom; but their small numbers, and the perpetual hunting after them, do not permit so easy an observation of their habits, as in warm countries, where it is said that they are of a size so monstrous, that they attack men, and have eaten several, amongst others the famous sea captain Francis Drake (François Drack), who, although armed, could not avoid this fate.'1

This passage is still retained in the revision of 1830, edited by the well-informed Desmarest. The story appears to have been derived from De Paw's Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains' (t. i. p. 245), a work which describes the death of Drake as follows:

1 Histoire Naturelle des Crustacés, contenant leur Description et leurs Mours, p. 149.

'This navigator having landed on the Isle of Crabs in America, he was there immediately surrounded by these animals; although he was armed, although he made a stout resistance, he had to succumb. These monstrous crustaceans, the largest known in the world, cut in pieces with their claws his legs, his arms, and his head, and gnawed his carcase to the 1 bones.' very There are some elements of truth in this blood-curdling story. It is true that Drake died in the West Indies. It is true that he landed on Crab Island. It is true that he met with huge crabs. But he died on board his own ship of a sickness brought on by disappointment, and his body wrapped in a leaden shroud was buried in the sea. The Crab Island on which he once landed was in the Eastern not the Western Main, nor did he lose his life upon it. The landing was in the course of his successful voyage round the world, and it was not the crabs that ate Drake, but Drake and his people that ate the crabs, of which a single one, they afterwards said, was sufficient to make a meal for four That might well be, if the crabs at all resembled the giant crab of Australia, Pseudocarcinus gigas (Lamarck),2 in which the carapace is said to be sometimes two feet in breadth, and in which one of the claws of the front pair attains a vast bulk. Such crabs as these may be thought to justify a statement in Linschotten's 'Voyage to Goa,' according to which, 'To the South of Goa, at a place called St. Peter's Sand, there are Crabs so great and numerous, that Men are forced to keep a good Watch to defend themselves, for if they get one in their Claws it costs him his life.'

men.

No crustaceans, however, either extinct or extant, can compete in size and power with those fabled by Olaus and De Paw. In the far distant Silurian age the fossil genus Pterygotus among the Merostomata is supposed to afford the largest specimens of the whole crustacean class.

1 Nouvelle Biographie générale, edited by Hoefer, t. 14, p. 737. 1855. 2 An author's name appended in parentheses by custom signifies that he is responsible only for the species, and that this no longer stands in the genus to which he had assigned it.

The remains make it probable that some of them attained a length of six feet and a breadth at the widest part of the body of nearly two feet. The sculpture on the carapace, like conventional feathers drawn by some old Assyrian artist, is thought to have led the Scotch quarrymen to call these giant fossils by the quaint name of Seraphim.' Great as their size was, their organisation would have little fitted them to cope with an armed knight. Their nearest living allies belong to the genus Limulus, in which the eastern King Crab, Limulus moluccanus, attains a breadth of a foot by a length of two feet, although, to be sure, nearly one half of the length consists only of a great caudal spine. Among the Brachyura, Japan possesses a species which is certainly from one point of view a rival in size to the largest Pterygotus, and may almost seem to justify the old mythical narratives, for Macrocheira Kämpferi, de Haan, as a specimen in the British Museum shows, can span eight feet, and it is said that sometimes even eleven feet are within the compass of the outstretched arms ot the male. But portentous as we must allow these dimensions to be, the animal is after all only a spider crab, with comparatively weak and spindly legs, and a carapace which seldom if ever exceeds twelve inches in either length or breadth.

The fossil Trilobites, which compose the third order of the Gigantostraca, include indeed many species of inconsiderable size, but they are also represented by forms such as Asaphus tyrannus, Murchison, about a foot long, and others in the genus Paradoxides, measuring twenty-one inches.

Among the spiny lobsters or crawfish, a New Zealand species, Palinurus tumidus, has recently been described by Mr. T. W. Kirk as measuring twenty-four inches from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, and as having the carapace very much swollen, and measuring 21 inches in circumference. The European Palinurus vulgaris attains a length of 18 inches, also without including the antennæ,

H. Woodward, Transactions of the Palæontographical Society, 1866, p. 42.

which are sometimes considerably longer than the animal's body. The common lobster, though less bulky in the trunk and with more slender antennæ, attains an equal length, or by inclusion of its long and powerful claws might claim in this respect far to exceed the weak-limbed Palinurus. There is an Australian crayfish, Astacopsis serratus (Shaw), from ten to twenty inches long, and weighing some pounds, which makes a fine show when compared with the much more modest dimensions of the English crayfish. In the same way Leander serratus (Pennant), the common prawn of British markets, is humbled by contrast with Palamon carcinus, the river prawn of the West Indies and Guatemala, of Surinam and the Ganges, with its lobster-like size of twelve inches long. Palamon lar, from the Pacific Islands and India, exaggerates one of the characteristics of the genus to which it belongs, inasmuch as a male specimen five inches in length will have the second pair of legs nearly eight inches long-much longer, therefore, than the body which carries them. The Hermit Crabs appear to attain their maximum at about eight inches, a length not inconsiderable, seeing that it has to be accommodated to the vacant shell of a univalve mollusc. One, however, of their near kindred, Lithodes camschatica (Tilesius), has sometimes a span of four feet. its hermitage not in the shell of a mollusc, but in some cranny of the rocks. From this fastness it takes vengeance on the crab-eating octopus, and is itself so firmly lodged that it cannot easily be dragged out, except in fragments. Of shrimps, Pasiphaa princeps (S. I. Smith), dredged by the Albatross in 1883, may be accepted as the leader, seeing that it is not only far larger than any of its own genus hitherto known, but by its length of more than eight inches and a half, it exceeds all examples of kindred genera.

This makes

Among the Schizopoda the more familiar species are quite the reverse of bulky. A specimen of Gnathophausia ingens (Dohrn), measuring from the tip of the rostrum to the extremity of the telson or tail 157 millimètres, or 6 inches, is spoken of as possessing a truly gigantic size

for a Schizopod.' It is also said that this form ranks, therefore, as the largest by far of all hitherto known Schizopods,' although in truth an allied species in the same genus, Gnathophausia gigas, v. Willemoes Suhm, obtained by the Challenger from a depth of 2,200 fathoms, measures 142 mm., or 5 inches. Both of these species, with one or two others in the same genus, such as Gnathophausia Goliath, A. Milne-Edwards, far surpass most of those in the sub-order, the length usually ranging from half an inch to two inches.

Of the Stomatopoda, some are no more than threequarters of an inch in length, but of the species Lysiosquilla maculata (Fabricius), a male specimen, presented to the naturalists of the Challenger by the King of Amboina, fell short only by three-sixteenths of an inch of measuring a whole foot.

The Cumacea are a feeble folk. In some species the slender frame, with trunk and tail and tail appendages all told, does not exceed, or even equal, a twelfth of an inch. Only the arctic Diastylis Goodsiri (Bell), occasionally yields a Goliath of an inch and two-fifths. In the Isopoda there is a far greater range of size. Within a single genus, Eurycope mutica, Sars, which measures about one millimètre and a third, is contrasted with Eurycope gigantea, Sars, which reaches 33 millimètres, or about an inch and a third. Anilocra gigantea (Herklots), measuring three inches and a third, would seem a veritable monster in this sub-order, were it not far surpassed by the extremely exceptional Bathynomus giganteus of Alphonse Milne-Edwards, which is nine inches long by four inches broad. This prize was fished up by the United States Survey steamer Blake, under the supervision of Alex. Agassiz, from a depth of 955 fathoms, in the region of the Gulf Stream, to the north-east of the bank of Yucatan to the north of the Tortugas. Among the Amphipoda, none yet discovered reach more than about half the dimensions of this great Isopod. At the other end of the scale

Il mesure, en effet, près de 0m, 23 de long sur 0m 10 de large.