Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/204

Rh creatures, which I saw, on putting some of them into a glass phial, to be the young of some Crab in one of the stages of its metamorphosis: not in that earliest state which is called Zoea, but that secondary condition known as Megalopa. Many of these minute animals I brought home, and placed in a vase, where they afforded me some entertainment.

These little creatures were about one fifth of an inch in length; they had assumed much of the form of a Crab, but the abdomen projected like a long slender tail behind, and was armed at the tip with fine radiating pencils of hairs. The eyes, which were very large, projected on each side, being set on thick footstalks; and as they were of a brilliant green hue, and very lustrous, they formed a conspicuous feature of the little animals. They manifested a sensibility to light correspondent to this development of the eyes. At night they congregated on that side of their glass prison, which was next the candle; and when I transferred the light to the opposite side, they immediately scuttled across, and crowded up as close to it as possible. They would follow the candle round and round the glass, shifting as it shifted, and stopping when it stopped. They were very nimble in swimming, generally keeping near the surface; but died off very fast: though the vessel was proportionally large, a few only out of some scores survived the first night. One or two, however, underwent the change into the Crab-form, which I was able to recognise as belonging to the genus Portunus.

I took an interesting fish in a somewhat unusual manner. Before the infant breeze had yet broken up