Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/65

46 retained one of his fingers in her grasp (he is a bachelor) as she closes her habitation? We hurry to the rescue, but he has only stepped on "this nasty thing" we discover, and he holds it up to us with a derisive look, as much as to say, "catch me beachcombing any more!!" but it is a prize indeed which has caused him this alarm, a Crustacean, very unlike the Lobsters and Crabs generally met with 5 it is the Ibacus Peronii of Leach, and belongs to an order of Macrorous Decapods (Scyllarideæ), or in plainer terms, long-tailed, ten-footed Crustaceans,—feet all of equal length. When full grown it measures about five inches, the carapace much wider than it is long, with a lamellar prolongation on each side which covers the feet. The eyes instead of being situated near the external angle of the carapace are far distant from it. The abdomen is short, suddenly narrowed from before, backwards. It is commonly known as the u Kangaroo Crab," from a habit of striking the water with its flabelliform tail, and bounding into the air, and with the same apparatus it swims rapidly—it being, as in many other Crustaceans, specially constructed for that purpose. Our bathing-house acquaintance has captured many fine specimens, of one of which a sketch is given at the end of this chapter.

Swimming about occasionally amongst the seaweeds the pretty Syngnathus may be met with;—the common name of Pipe-fish it receives from its tubular snout, and long attenuated body: this is the marsupial fish which formed the subject of a paper read by Mr. Becker, before the Philosophical Institute of Victoria, (Transactions, Vol. 1, page 14, 1857,) but the fact