. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE BAFFIN'S BAY ARCTURUS. 477 fro. Ever and anon the blade is shut forciblj- upon the grooved haft, and woe be to the unfortunate infusorium, or mite, or rotifer that comes within that grasp ! The whole action, the posture, figure of the animal, and the structure of the limb, are so closely like those of the tropical genus Jfanfis among insects, which I have watched thus taking its prey in the Southern United States and the West Indies, that I have no doubt passing animals are caught by
. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE BAFFIN'S BAY ARCTURUS. 477 fro. Ever and anon the blade is shut forciblj- upon the grooved haft, and woe be to the unfortunate infusorium, or mite, or rotifer that comes within that grasp ! The whole action, the posture, figure of the animal, and the structure of the limb, are so closely like those of the tropical genus Jfanfis among insects, which I have watched thus taking its prey in the Southern United States and the West Indies, that I have no doubt passing animals are caught by the crustacean also in this way, though I have not seen any actually secured. " The antennje, too, at least the inferior pair, are certainly, I should think, accessory weapons of the animal's predatory warfare. Tliey consist of four or five stout joints, each of which is armed on its inferior edge with two rows of long, stiif, curved spines, set as regularly as the tx?eth of a comb, the rows divaricating at a. rather wide angle. From the sudden clutching of these organs, I have no doubt tliat they too are seizing prey ; and very effective implements they must be, for the joints bend down towards each other, and the long rows of spines intei'lacing must form a secure prison, like a wire cage, out of which the jaws probably take the victim, wheu the bending in of the antenna; has delivered it to the mouth. " But these well-furnished animals are not satisfied with fishing merely at one station. As I have said above, they climb nimbly and eagerly to and fro, insinuating themselves among the branches, and dragging themselves hither and thither by the twigs. On a straight surface, as when marching (the motion is too free and rapid to call it crawling) along the stem of the zoophj^e, the creature proceeds by loops, catching hold with the fore limbs, and then bringing up the hinder ones close, the intermediate segments of the thin body forming an arch, exactly as the caterpi
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectzoology
