A HISTORY OF KENT tips of the claws, as the photograph clearly shows, are covered with stiff hair or bristles, brown at the base, tipped with crimson, the eyes dark indigo blue. The length of the specimen over all is 6 inches ; from snout to tip of tail 3^ inches; length of claws from socket to tip, 3I inches ; greatest width across the carapace, i| inches. The only crustacean which I can find mentioned in the books at my disposal which is at all likely to answer to the specimen in my possession is the painted squat lobster {Galathea strigosd). It is, however, only just mentioned ; there is no description nor illustration of it, and as I have never seen a specimen, I am unable to confirm or refute the theory. Against the idea of its being a lobster are the facts of its size, its colour, its having only three pairs of legs — lobsters and nearly all crabs have four ; the Japanese porcupine crab (Lithodes hystrix) is among the notable exceptions to the rule — and the long slender claws covered with hair at the tips. The relative size of the cephalothorax and the abdomen seem to point to its being a connecting link between the long-tailed and short-tailed crustaceans.' As there are five British species of Galathea^ it is fortunate that Mr. Hussey gave particulars of size and colour and a trustworthy portrait by which his felicitous 'theory' as to the name of the species can be fully confirmed. His inference from the fishermen's ignorance is more open to question, since ignorance as a rule is ' fairly strong evidence ' of nothing but its own innocent self. As already explained, the last pair of legs, fifth or fourth according as the chelipeds are or are not reckoned in the series, are not wanting in these crustaceans. They are very slight and often doubled away within the branchial cavity so that they escape notice. The Japanese porcupine crab, now known as Acantholithus histrix (de Haan), has also its full complement of legs. According to the most modern view, the lobsters do indeed lead up to these Macrura anomala and also to the Brachyura, but through two separate lines of evolution, not as was formerly thought through the former to the latter. For distinguishing G. strigosa, which Adam White calls the common plated lobster, from G. sqimmifera, which he calls Montagu's plated lobster,' it should be noticed that the latter has nine spines to the rostrum, and the former has seven, the foremost of these seven being much more advanced than the foremost of the nine. G. strigosa is much the larger with the hands of its chelipeds more spinose, and with the third joint of its outer maxillipeds longer than the fourth, while in the other species that relation of length is reversed. In the great assemblage of the normal Macrura Kent is sparsely represented, though the few species it can claim are distributed among several families. The list may properly be headed by the common lobster, Astacus gammarus (Linn.), and the Norway lobster, Nephrops mrvegiciis (Linn.), both belonging to the family Nephropsidae. The former is no doubt intended by Ireland in his history of Kent, when he says, ' The native Milton oysters are superior to any others, as well as ' Popular History of British Crustacea, p. 87. 246
