Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.
Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
along the sea-shore, may have disturbed little colonies of Crabs
quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
quick _side-long_ movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
periwinkles, whelks, &c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:[21] to the former, the luminosity
of the ocean, or of the foam before the prows of vessels, is, to a
great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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