ABOUT CRABS. 191 



of industry ; in every science and art wliich ministers to either ; in all 

 the development of human thought which is to make men better and 

 braver, it is to bear a rich fruitage for the State, for the nation, and for 

 mankind. 



ABOUT CEABS. 



By Eev. SAMUEL LOCKWOOD, Ph. D. 



WITH one's eyes kept open, how very much there is to excite 

 interest in a summer stroll beside the sea ! Marine life — the 

 creatures that represent the life-zone that belts or fringes the great 

 murmuring world of waters — is so peculiar, some exquisitely beau- 

 tiful, as the sea anemones, others droll and grotesque, as the great 

 class known as the Crustacea. The tide is out. See that bird with 

 bill curving upward. A beautiful functional adaptation it is — for 

 with it small stones are turned over so deftly, and thus its food, the 

 sheltered worms, are exposed. It is the avocet. So we turn avocet, 

 using a stick in the operation. Ah ! we have disturbed a poor poly- 

 dactyled refugee in his retreat. See how threateningly he snaps at us 

 his two pairs of pincers like formidable blacksmith-tongs. What a 

 crusty-looking fellow he is ! Now he is off, running sidewise ; for 

 they can go "forward, backward, and oblique." There is speed 

 enough, but the gait is so comical. But crabs are given to flank- 

 movements. We determine to try one on him; so with the stick just 

 touching him laterally, and a fillip, and he is on his back. At this 

 point, Frank, who is always facetious, and who had just been saying 

 that he had come from the Bowling Green (he meant Alley), says, we 

 have knocked the poor fellow off his pins — and that it was a ten-strike, 

 adding for our enlightenment, "Don't you see that crab stands on 

 ten pins?" Now, it so happens in this connection that it is just on 

 this " ten-pin " arrangement that the naturalist founds his division 

 Decapoda^ as one of the three orders of the great class Crustacea, 

 The decapods, or ten-footed, include the crabs and lobsters, and rank 

 the highest in their class. 



Those who cater to high-living are now announcing the arrival of 

 " Soft-shell Crabs." We propose to give a succinct account of four 

 of our commonest crabs, and shall in passing take note of these " soft 

 shells." 



An artist once made a picture of a child; a gay, graceful, romping, 

 and petulant little one it was. It was years afterward, in another 

 place, that he limned a youth, lovable and full of life. And it was 

 long after this, and in some other place, that he painted the portrait 

 of a full-grown man, with a countenance staid, stern, and uncompan- 

 ionable. Although the artist did not then know it, the three paint- 



