GARDENS OF THE SEA 



197 



Fighter! 

 arid killtra 



All the members of the large sub-class, Mala- 

 costraca, are carnivorous, eating anything they 

 can find whether dead or alive. They are the 

 true sea scavengers; and yet each crab in the 

 sea is ever and always a fighter and a killer. 

 They are no respecters of kind, killing and 

 eating their weaker brothers without the slight- 

 est hesitancy; and being eaten in turn with 

 no great struggle. The calmness and ease with 

 which one crab pulls another to pieces and 

 devours him seems quite unparalleled among 

 the animals of the land. And yet with all the 

 savagery and ferocity of these cannibals they 

 are given, not hideous and repulsive colors, but 

 delicate hues of red, reddish-brown, steel-blue, 

 and yellow. 



And why not beautiful color in the sea life? 

 If the birds of the air and the flowers of the 

 field have it, why not the creeping things of the 

 deep, and the algce of the beaches? Color is, 

 indeed, the sign of vitality, the symbol of life. 

 Strength, exuberance, endurance go with it; 

 and in this respect the sea is perhaps beyond 

 the land. All its shallows are aglow with color. 

 On the eastern coast of Mexico the sea gardens, 

 seen through a water glass, look like autumn- 

 tinged uplands in the days of Indian summer. 

 Submerged in a blue-green atmosphere, and 



Color cf sea 

 hie. 



