This crab has an even smaller body in proportion to its size than the thornback, and its legs are so very long and so very slender that they remind one of those of a daddy-long-legs. Its carapace is drawn out in front into a kind of beak, which is quite as long as the carapace itself, and while the crab is alive it is of a most beautiful pink and puce colour. It is not a very common creature, but is sometimes to be found in the rocky pools near low-water mark on our southern coasts, and is covered, very often, with sea-weeds or sponges, just like the thornback.
PLATE XXIV
THE FOUR-HORNED SPIDER CRAB (2)
Perhaps this is the commonest of the British spider crabs. Indeed, it is so plentiful at Bognor, and at other places on the southern coast of England, that when a crab pot is taken out of the water as many as twenty or even thirty of these creatures are sometimes found in it. They are called by the fishermen “sea-spiders,” and are generally so clothed with those odd sea-weeds called “corallines” that you can hardly see any part of their “shells” at all.
In this crab the carapace is drawn out in front into a very long beak indeed, which has four horns upon it, and the whole upper surface is covered with short, sharp spikes and stout hairs.
1. THE LONG-BEAKED SPIDER CRAB.
2. THE FOUR-HORNED SPIDER CRAB.