240 Dzvellers of the Sea and Shore 



meaning "a laughable fighter," is given to a crab of 

 my region. But In my contact with it in the salt 

 marshes, where It honeycombs the ground with its bur- 

 rows, and where it is to be observed not in hundreds, 

 not In thousands, but In millions, I have not yet seen the 

 least display of pugnacity toward its fellows or toward 



^ humans. Uca minax, "the threatener," the present 

 name of the species whose habits I propose to describe, 

 Is hardly less inept. It Is true that none among our 

 armor-bearing creatures wears so threatening a pan- 

 oply, but the male, in his possession of a clumsy and 

 apparently quite useless claw. Is far from a threatening 

 creature. This prodigious appendage is entirely want- 

 ing In the female, whose chelipeds are small and of 

 equal size. Just why the male, who generally carries 

 It at rest across the broad front of his carapace. Is thus 

 distinguished does not seem clear; for at no time does 

 It appear to be anything but an encumbrance. 



Our fiddler crab {Uca minax) is not a large crab, 



\ as crabs go, being not much more than an Inch and a 

 quarter over the breadth of its carapace. It likes to 

 live In a region of brackish water, on the open, sandy 

 reaches at the very upper limits of the tide near where 

 the marsh grass starts to grow. Here It depends for 

 food on the minute algal deposits left twice daily at Its 

 door by the tides. Vegetable matter is not Its whole 

 diet, however; it will greedily attack any bits of carrion 

 which chance to come within Its range. It prefers its 

 victuals fresh. Unlike the true scavengers of the shore, 

 its meat must have no suspicion of being stale. But 

 opportunities of this kind are rare, and it is perforce 

 obliged to subsist for the most part on what plants will 



