P. H. GOSSE, _del._ LEIGHTON, BROS.
NUT-CRAB. ANGLED-CRAB.
]
The general colour is a light salmon-red, often with the hinder half
of the carapace, and the inner sides of the limbs, of a pale buff. The
eyes (not the stalks) and the movable finger of each hand, which is
slender and elegantly curved, are polished black.
Not uncommon with us, it is not very often seen even by the naturalist,
as it seems to be properly an inhabitant of deep water. Occasionally
it is washed ashore on the beach by a heavy sea; but this is
accidental. Montagu first ascertained it to be British by finding
it at Kingsbridge, near Plymouth. Mr. Couch finds it common on
the Cornwall coast, together with an allied, but certainly distinct,
species, the _G. rhomboides_ of the Mediterranean, to be identified
by its lacking a second spine behind each angular one, which is well
marked in our species. Though essentially a southern form, it occurs
on the Dublin coast, and that in sufficient number to have obtained a
popular appellation,--that of “Coffin-crab;” the term “coffin” being
possibly a word of the Irish tongue, meaning something very different
from that which it suggests to our ears.
Cranch records, as a curious habit of the species, that “they live in
excavations formed in the hardened mud, and that their habitations,
at the extremities of which they live, are open at both ends.” This
description implies a habitat above low water, if not above tide-marks;
for where else could “hardened mud” be found? or if it were found in
the deep water, how could it come under the observer’s cognizance?
However, I know that many marine creatures are littoral in some
localities, which are exclusively deep-water subjects in others.
Several observant naturalists have noticed the frequency with which
the species is obtained from the stomachs of the larger ground-feeding
fishes,--the cod especially. Mr. Ball has taken four at a time from
a single cod in Youghal shambles. This is a well-known source for
procuring rare specimens of the inhabitants of the deep, particularly
Crustacea and the shelled Mollusca; for the fishes are expert and
persevering and successful collectors of natural history, and are
continually picking up objects for which the naturalist would almost
give one of his eyes. Mr. Gordon of Elgin, some years ago, gave a
long list of Crustacea, many of them of great rarity, which he had
procured from stomachs of cod-fish, “through the agency of Widow Scott
and her son John, of the fishing village of Stotfield,” on the Moray
Firth. His remarks are suggestive, not only to those residing on the
coast, but to the denizens of inland towns. “By a small douceur to the
fisherman’s family, and by the assistance of the fish-curer on the
coast, the fishmonger of the large town, or of some acquaintance in
the fishing village, it is believed that almost any number of these
now useless receptacles [viz., cod-stomachs], could be obtained. It
may excite at first a little nausea to open up and examine these
omnivorous reservoirs, but this will soon pass off; and were it of
longer continuance than it is, the stores to be unfolded would amply
compensate for all the disagreeable feeling that may for a time
arise. It is not only the crustacean that is thus gathered from the
inaccessible depths of the ocean, but often the rare shell, with its
still rarer inhabitant. The radiated animal and the curious zoophyte
will also be found congregated together there; all of them, no doubt,
at times mutilated or partly digested, but not unfrequently fresh and
complete, as if newly past the voracious jaws.”