Limulus cancriformis. (Natural size.)
“This genus,” says Lamarck, “is almost isolated among the group in which it is placed. Its body is covered with a great horny buckler, very thin, and made of a single piece, of a roundish oval form. The head is confounded with the trunk, and the antennæ are very short. They possess three eyes, two in front, and one, very small, further back. Their legs are very numerous,—the two in front, much the largest, spread out in the form of oars, and furnished at their extremity with silky articulated bristles.”
The Water Flea, ([Cyclops quadricornis].)
There are as many as twelve known species of the Water Flea. That represented in the engraving is extremely common, and forms a most interesting object for the microscope. We have availed ourselves of Mr. Pritchard’s popular description of this curious creature.
“The Author of Nature, to whom all things are alike easy of execution, as if intending to teach man a lesson of humility, and that no part of creation, however minute, is beneath his consideration, has conferred on these animals, that are barely perceptible to our unassisted vision, more elegance and variety of form, more richness in their colouring, and more beauty and exquisite finishing, than on the whale or the elephant, which mainly excite our admiration, by the magnitude of the mass of living matter they present to us.
Cyclops quadricornis. (Fig. 1, highly magnified; fig. 2, natural size.)