370 THE GENUS CALLIXECTES—M. J. RATHBUN. vol.xviii. 



the male any time dnriug lier third summer, and as she sheds twice 

 during this time, it frequently happens that he finds her while in a soft 

 condition, taking possession just the same. Woe betide the luckless 

 young male he finds too soft to run ! There will be one soft crab less 

 and one old male will have a good dinner. There is no sentiment about 

 C. sapklus. 



How long the male lives I do not know for certain, but I think about 

 four. years from his last shedding, which would make his entire life 

 seven years. When hebecomes superannuated, he seeks quiet nooks and 

 safe shallows and prepares for death. In the fall (October and Novem- 

 ber) I have found numbers of these old fellows scarcely able to move 

 and too feeble to bite; their flesh is all gone or is soft and watery, and 

 evaporates when dead or the minnows soon clean it out. A day or so 

 after death, if the waves do not wash them to pieces, the shells are as 

 clean and empty as any cast-off shell. I think this is the kind of shell 

 which, occasionally found, gives rise to the idea that the crab sheds 

 after maturity. It sheds to grow and for no other purpose, and when 

 through growing it is through shedding. 



I have seen full-grown females with a triangular apron, perhaps about 

 three each summer, and have always known them as neuters. Many 

 sj^ecimens are defoi^med in the fingers. This I attribute to the accident 

 of losing them, followed by some sort of pressure on the new fingers 

 before they have become hard — as, for instance, in a sudden fright they 

 might exert them over shells or other hard substances and permanently 

 bend them. I remember one adult male whose claws were crossed at 

 the points, and another in which the points worked past each other like 

 a pair of shears. The fingers and claws that are renewed after losing 

 the original ones are never so large or so effective as the original ones. 

 This recuperative power lasts in full force only during the growing- 

 years and diminishes with age. A middle-aged crab will reproduce a 

 claw only half the size of the original, and an old crab will reproduce 

 none, or only a small nub that is useless. 



There is no one, I think, engaged in the crab fishery on this coast. 

 Occasionally the negroes of Port Lavaca will send a few dozen boiled 

 to the interior towns and retail them at 10 cents each. Mr. F. V. Gentry, 

 of Port Lavaca, has shipped a few lots of adult crabs, but there is no 

 one making a specialty of catching them. I believe he paid 25 cents 

 per dozen. 



I have seen CaUinectes stqyidits, or what I took to be them, in the 

 Guadalupe Kiver at Victoria; in the Navidad Piver, Jackson County, 

 20 miles above Texana; and I caught three, which were C. sapidus, in a 

 spring branch which flows into the Garcitas Creek, Victoria County. 

 They were 40 miles from salt water, air line. They were diftereut in 

 color from those in salt water, being of a reddish brown ; otherwise I 

 saw no difference in them. 



On November 14, 1894, while seeking stone crabs in the mouth of 



