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50 
distinction. It is an odd fact, that instead of courting admiration 
many of them spend a good deal of their time buried in the mud. 
Shell fish (?) are to be found on almost every coast. Naturalists 
aptly call them crustaceans, clearly because the body is covered by 
a hard chalky shell (carapace), which the animal is able to cast off 
when the house becomes too small for its tenant. We have all 
seen juvenile crabs scampering over the sand, and perhaps have 
learnt experience from incautiously handling them. It is bad at. 
any time to get one’s finger in a pair of pincers, and the grip of a 
crab’s claws is no exception to the rule. A Frenchmen who was 
making a dictionary describéd a crab as a red fish that walks back- 
wards. his definition would be admirable but for an entire absence 
of truth, inasmuch as the creature‘is not red, and is not a fish, and 
does not walk backwards. But let us be students for a moment, 
and see what kind of thing a crab really is: Structurally it is not 
at all unlike an animal. Its body is made up of about twenty-one 
distinct pieces or segments held together in a good measure by the 
skm. There are ten jointed legs, and a short tail, and the com- 
pound eyes are placed on moveable stalks. There are two antenne 
or feelers. The breathing organs are not lungs nor spiracles as in the 
insect and spider, but branchie or gills arranged in plates (lamelle), 
attached to the basis of the smaller legs, and are admirably suited 
to a creature that lives in the water. From time to time the crab 
is obliged to cast its shell and make a larger. The feat is a 
necessity because there is no provision for the expansion of the 
shell. In the case of the echinus or sea urchin there is a wonderful 
araangement for the enlargement of the covering as the animal 
grows, but the poor crab has, like his brother the lobster, to toil 
and toil until his task is completed. Does the crustacean inflict 
much pain upon himself? However that may be, he is alive to 
some sense of danger, so for safety he takes his soft body into a 
hole and proceeds to make a new house. Cancer Pagurus, for such 
is the name of the large edible crab, is very fond of fighting, and 
while he savagely mutilates his opponent he, of course, is apt to 
lose a limb or two himself, but it doesn't matter because he can 
easily provide himself with another leg or two. Then again the 
big crab will eat the little one, merely proving that he is a cannibal: 
Several kinds of crab are found on our coast, and others (such as 
the spider crab and the thornback crab) are often brought up in 
mackerel nets. But the hermit or soldier crab must not be left 
out. Except on the upper part of his body he is without armour, 
and being conscious of weakness, he pushes himself stern first into 
an empty shell—one he may have found empty or it may be, one 
from which he has cruelly dragged out its rightful owner. ‘<All is 
fair in love and war.” . oe ae, 
