Li 
OUR CARCINOLOGICAL FRIENDS. 
Amone our first acquaintances of the sea-shore 
are sure to be a number of those merry sprites 
which have not yet mastered the lesson of how to 
walk straight—or rather, we should say, walk 
straight ahead, for if many of the crabs have 
failed to acquire the habit of following in the 
direction towards which the head points, they have 
well acquired the art of diverging straight from it 
at aright angle. It is certainly one of the most in- 
teresting sights of the shore to observe these appar- 
ently one-sided creatures hurrying off in their lat- 
eral progression, making probably for their burrows 
in the sand or mud; pass them, and note how rap- 
idly some of them reverse their motion, without 
even so much as stopping to glance at their pur- 
suer. The machinery appears to have given out at 
one end, when they immediately reverse, and travel 
back over their old gourse. Among the more pro- 
nounced offenders against the commonly accepted 
law of proper walking are the little ‘ fiddlers,’ or 
‘calling crabs’ as they are sometimes termed. 
Their burrows, indicated by holes about as large 
as would be made by a thrust from an umbrella- 
point, are scattered all over the salt marshes and 
mud-flats at about high-water mark, and from 
ff . 81 
