with their fore-claws and consume on the spot. 

 Each male is easily distinguished by his great 

 pincer — an appendage so proportionately big that 

 it is practically useless; and this he carries folded 

 before his broad body in a manner that readily sug- 

 gests its popular name: yet it resembles not a 

 fiddle so much as it does a huge bass viol. But let 

 there be the merest gesture, such as the raising of 

 an arm or a turning of the head, and immediately 

 there will be a swift hurrying and stampeding on 

 all sides; in another moment the fiddlers will have 

 scuttled pell-mell, each into the nearest of the 

 hundred surrounding holes; and silence absolute 

 will reign once more, broken only by the occasional 

 splash of a falling drop from the moisture-laden 

 banks, or the startled croak of some unseen marsh- 

 hen just become aware of a human presence — a 

 water-fowl which makes its living off the inhabi- 

 tants of the pools and sedges bordering the sea. 



Yet by far the larger population is transient, if 

 I may so express it; it is not peculiar to the marsh 

 alone; its components for the most part are forms 

 not infrequently found to be the regular tenants 

 of the rocks and weeds and wharf-piles, in the quiet 

 waters of tide pools or along a sheltered shore. But 



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