THE CRUSTACEA OF NEW JERSEY. 49 



shrimps had, with not a drop of water to move in; but they are 

 not to be judged by the dehcacy of their anatomy. There was 

 a soft spot in the miid, somewhere, and when, later in the month, 

 I waded between cakes of ice and looked long into the depths 

 of this upland pool, finally I found the fairies in abundance, a 

 few well grown, but mostly mere babies. They were earlier in 

 '84. On the 226. of the month I gathered a great many, and 

 all fully grown. To describe them is impracticable. They are 

 lilliputian lobsters, pearly w^hite, picked with crimson ; and with 

 eleven pairs of feathery legs that move with the perfection of 

 grace. They swim- upon their backs, and the movement of these 

 legs or paddles is the very poetry of motion. While the water 

 remains cool, they will dart, float and ramble among the dead 

 twigs and leaves in the bottom of the pool, but disappear 

 promptly, after a few hot days, or more gradually, as the waters 

 soak aw^ay, if the weather is cool. Dr. Packard says of them: 

 'At Seekonk, Mass., they occurred abundantly May 2, in a large 

 pond which completely dried up in summer; '^ * * when I 

 visited the pond * * * May 13, none w^ere to be found. It 

 seems from this quite evident that the animal probably dies off 

 at the approach of w^arm weather and does not reappear until 

 after cool weather sets in late in the autumn, being represented 

 in the summier by the eggs alone; and thus the appearance of 

 this Phyllopod is apparenth^ determined mainly by the tempera- 

 ture.' Bearing this in mind, I took several lumps of the dried 

 mud, last summer, and placed them' in ice-water, hoping to have 

 the eggs, if there were any, hatch, and so puzzle the doctor with 

 midsummer specimiens, but the plan did not work. Either I got 

 no eggs with the mud, or the water was too cold ; at any rate, 

 my plan was a failure, and, as it was intended to be a joke, de- 

 served nO' better fate. Returning to pure science, I waded the 

 waters of that upland pond faithfully until it froze. I could 

 find no specimen. Even in March of '84 there were none to be 

 seen; and this year, '85, they were apparently but a fe\v days 

 old, as late as April i. In an aquarium they are very beautiful, 

 but must be kept by themselves. A dozen were placed in a small 

 tank containing mud-minnows and sunfish. The latter ate the 



4 MU 



