With Fish-Lines and Nets 105 



stupor, and then the old shell is thrown off, 

 leaving a perfect crab, one size larger, but soft 

 and helpless. If all the other crabs in the box 

 are not equally helpless, the new soft-shell fares 

 no better than in Washington Market. My 

 friend, the Cap'n, examines his crabs at six in 

 the morning, at noon, at six o'clock at night, 

 and often again at midnight, when he has a 

 large number of "shedders " on hand. More- 

 over, a crab gets hard so quickly that for market 

 purposes he should be taken out of the car and 

 packed in sea-weed the moment he sheds. In 

 five hours after shedding, a crab, if left in 

 water, becomes a "leather-back" and of no 

 value, comparatively speaking. There is one 

 man near us who, with the aid of his two boys, 

 sends to market more than a hundred "soft- 

 shells " a day in the season. The artificial 

 propagation of crabs in shallow salt-water 

 ponds has been tried here, but abandoned, 

 owing to the regularity with which the crabs 

 devour their young when they can catch them. 

 Cooks seem to differ as to the right time 

 which a crab should boil. Expert opinions vary 

 from five minutes to half an hour. I am inclined 



