Chapter XIV 

 MORE FRIENDS IN ARMOR 



How "fiddler crab" came to be the popular name of 

 the crustaceans which forms the subject of this chapter 

 is not easy to determine. On consulting the books, I 

 find reasons as various as they are numerous. The 

 most likely explanation, perhaps, lies in the allusion to 

 the single enormous claw carried by the male. It is said 

 that the back-and-forth movement of that claw re- 

 sembles the act of fiddling. Well, this may appear so 

 to some people; but it seems to me a far-fetched peg 

 upon which to hang a name. The Japanese have a 

 more apt and much prettier term. They call it siho 

 maneki, "beckoning for the return of the tide." 



Whether right or wrong, its common name is at least 

 definite and durable. It has never been known by any 

 other English name; and when one speaks of a fiddler 

 crab there is no misunderstanding as to what sort of 

 creature is meant. The nomenclature of science has 

 not been so happy. Since the fiddler crab has come 

 under the cognizance of the learned systematists, it has 

 paraded under at least four different formidable Latin 

 terms, and all of them of an even more doubtful sig- 

 nificance than that which Is born by its popular one. 

 An instance in point is Gelasimus pugilator. This name, 



239 



