BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



Thus did one family of Haitian sand anemones or 

 more accurately, Asteractis expansa, start their 

 lives on my beach. 



About six o'clock one tropical winter evening, 

 a disgruntled mother fiddler crab kicked several 

 hundred of her offspring into the sea. Most of 

 them soon died, some being eaten, others tangled 

 up in the drifting sea-weed, or thrown ashore and 

 thoroughly dried. One at least lived, and today 

 on my beach, a year later, I watched him come 

 out of his burrow near the bow of my dessicated 

 boat. I state all this with assurance because it is 

 the manner of birth of all fiddler crabs. For many 

 days the mother crab carries dozens of bunches of 

 eggs around with her. They are so heavy that she 

 fears to leave her burrow except at dusk. She 

 has little or no warmth of affection for them and 

 only through instinct is moved nightly to wade 

 into the treacherous shallows and flick her growing 

 offspring about, — thus aerating them. 



One evening, invariably about dusk, the young 

 burst their shells and at every flick of their 

 mother's body they are scattered by the thousand 

 thro a ""^ the water. They bear exactly the same 

 amount of resemblance to their parent that a 

 horned toad does to a pussy cat. The head and 

 thorax part is enormous and is made up chiefly of 

 two long spines and a pair of monstrous eyes. A 

 slender string of five beads forms an abdomen of 

 sorts, and two small oars project at the sides, 

 whose blades are tufts of feathery hairs. Twenty- 



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