Crouching among the rubbish, with all its long limbs snugly packed
together, as if hoping to find safety in being overlooked, we see a
strange form of crustacea, the Angled Crab.[115] Vain hope! How can
a creature of that bizarre form, and of those conspicuous colours,
be concealed from notice by merely lying still? Gently touch him
behind, and what an enormous length of limb is suddenly thrown out!
If, according to the proverb, “kings have long arms,” surely this must
be the very monarch of the crabs; and most curiously are they folded
when at rest, the fore-arm lying close, throughout its length, upon
the upper arm, the elbow projecting far on each side. The carapace is
sometimes described as rhomboidal, but this does not give us a correct
idea of its form; its outline is rather that of an isosceles triangle,
of which the apical half is cut off; the base of this truncate
triangle, which is the front side of the shell, runs off into two sharp
spines at the angles, and has also a broad projection in the middle,
on each side of which are seated the long footstalks of the eyes, and
which carries on its front the two pairs of antennæ. The thighs of the
true legs are thin and blade-like, so that these limbs all pack one
over the other very compactly.
[Illustration: