The Sharp-beaked Crabs (_Oxyrhyncha_) include all those long-legged creatures that are known collectively as the Spider Crabs; and here, again, we have to do with species that almost exclusively inhabit deep water. Although this is the case, but little difficulty is experienced, as a rule, in obtaining specimens. If you are unable to take a trip in a trawler for the purpose of examining the ‘rubbish’ that is dredged from deep water, simply obtain permission to search the nets and the boats as they arrive in port. In the latter case you are almost certain to find the crabs you require, though it is probable that some of the species will have been damaged by the hauling and shaking of the nets. [Illustration: FIG. 214.--THE LONG-ARMED CRAB (_Corystes Cassivelaunus_)] These interesting crabs have been spoken of as the monkeys of the sea, and the comparison will certainly be tolerated by anyone who has watched the creatures as they climb among the corallines and sea firs in an aquarium. Among such growths they are quite at home; and although their movements do not often suggest the extreme agility of the monkey tribe, yet the ease with which they seize the branches of the submarine forest with their long ‘arms’ and pull their bodies from one tree-like structure to another is decidedly monkey-like. Their comparison with the long-legged spiders is also a happy one as far as their general form and movements are concerned, but it must be remembered that they have not the same reputation for cruel, predaceous habits, for they are more truly the scavengers of the deep, subsisting mainly on the decomposing bodies of their dead associates. The movements of most spider crabs are so slow and deliberate that one can hardly imagine them capable of anything of the nature of violent action; yet, when occasion requires it, they will sometimes strike at the object of their wrath with a most vigorous snap of their claws. [Illustration: FIG. 215.--SPIDER CRABS AT HOME]