Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/235

188 five species at least in Weymouth Bay, some of which, remarkable for the variety and beauty of their colours, I have noticed elsewhere. All the species burrow expertly in the sand, not entirely, but so as just to leave exposed the two eyes, which, like the garret-windows of a house (as Captain Harris says of the eyes of the Hippopotamus), are placed on the very summit of the head.

On the weeds and sea-grass those pretty Prawns are abundant which have been called Æsops, after the old hump-backed fabulist, because of the projection of the third segment of the abdomen dorsally, giving to these little Crustacea a curiously deformed appearance, when extended. The most common of our species, Cranch's Esop (Hippolyte Cranchii), has the hump very strongly marked. It is a pretty, active little thing, darting rapidly from weed to weed, varying much in colour, but usually mottled and clouded with white and purple. In another species just described by my friend Mr. Thompson under the name of H. Whitei, the deformity is scarcely perceptible; and this is a particularly lovely kind, being as elegant in form as it is brilliant in colour, and therefore very desirable for an Aquarium. The whole of the animal is of a fine emerald-green, with a pure white line running down the back; the body sprinkled with specks of azure. In the Tank this pretty species is not very lively, habitually clinging to sea-weeds and swimming little. Unfortunately it is the favourite prey of the larger Prawns (Palæmon), so that it cannot be preserved with these. If a few of the Hippolytes be turned