copulation, the female spawns twice — in some 

 cases probably oftener. Soon after the last batch 

 of eggs are laid, she dies. 



It is to be observed, therefore, that it was not 

 until a year after I caught its parents that "Little 

 Jim" appeared upon the scene. For a fortnight pre- 

 vious to actual hatching, however, it had been car- 

 ried about while still in the egg together with up- 

 wards of a million brothers and sisters attached to 

 the swimmerets of the mother. The swimmerets 

 compose an external, branched hairy process on the 

 under side of the mother's reflexed flat abdomen, 

 upon which the eggs — each egg no larger than the 

 period ending this sentence, and each attached to 

 a hair by a short tendril-like stem — are clustered 

 like an enormous compact bunch of tiny grapes. 

 When first extruded the mass was of a light 

 ochrous color; later at the time of hatching it had 

 become a brownish black. It was at this period of 

 incubation that I detached Little Jim with sev- 

 eral other embryonic crabs from the swimmerets 

 and placed it together with its unhatched com- 

 panions in a shallow dish of clean sea-water. 



In this receptacle, under the binoculars, the 

 course of its future development could be fol- 



[254] 



