But we may much more easily procure specimens of his bigger brother,
the Shaggy Flat-crab,[92] which abounds under nearly every flat stone
at low-water on Babbicombe beach, and indeed almost everywhere else,
under the like conditions. He is a curious subject, though far from
attractive as to his _personnel_, for he is, I regret to say, of
irreclaimably dirty habits. You never find him but he is begrimed and
saturated, so to speak, with the impalpable red mud of which our soil
consists,--the _débris_ of the red sandstone. Yet blame him not. He is
more hirsute than a modern swell; his hands and his face are as hairy
as Esau’s; a dense short pile of stiff bristles stands out from all his
prominences, and catches and entangles the sediment in the midst of
which he loves to riot. I say again, blame him not; we must not infer
that he likes dirt for its own sake, because he gets his living in
it, any more than the sweep or the dustman chose his trade because he
had a _penchant_ for the grime. Nay, dirty as our little flat friend
is, he is endowed with organs expressly for the purpose of cleaning
himself, and fails not to use them too. On first looking at him you
would suppose, comparing him with other Crabs, that he was short of one
pair of feet; yet presently, from a narrow, almost invisible crevice
behind, he jerks out two jointed limbs, as slender as bristles, which,
however, are each terminated by a tiny two-fingered claw, and are beset
throughout their length by stiff short hairs standing out at right
angles, like a brush. These feeble limbs are indeed cleansing brushes,
with which he keeps certain portions of his person clean, applying
them with the greatest ease to the whole surface of the abdomen, and
under-side of the carapace or body-shell, while the delicate fingers
of the little hand are used to pick off adhering matters that cannot
be removed by brushing. Then having done his washing, he cleans his
brushes with his mouth, and snugly folds them up, and packs them
away in their groove till he wants them again. Yet with all this, he
remains, as I said at first, a dirty subject notwithstanding.
[Illustration: