THE CRAB FISHERIES. 655 



been taken on about half a mile of the strand; and one year 1,200,000 were taken on about a mile. 

 They deposit their eggs and then leave the shore entirely until the same season next year. But 

 little, if anything, is known of their habits or localities during the interval. The number of eggs 

 is very great. They are so thick along the shore that they can be shoveled up and collected by 

 the wagon load. Great numbers are thus gathered and carried away to feed chickens. When 

 they hatch, the sand is fairly alive with the little creatures. A year or two since a vessel took 

 in a load of sand on the shore, and in two or three days so many of these young king crabs 

 appeared in it that they were obliged to throw the whole overboard. 



" The king crab is common on our whole Atlantic shoreT and is taken by farmers in quantity, 

 though it is not so remarkably abundant as in Delaware Bay. 



" Hogs eat the crabs with great avidity, and it is the common practice all along our shores to 

 gather them for that purpose in the proper season. It is common also to gather them into pens 

 and allow them to putrefy and form a kind of compound to be used as manure. Other persons 

 have composted them for the same purpose. For the raising of wheat they have been very suc- 

 cessfully used. On land which would not grow wheat at all up to that time, crops of 20, 25, and 

 even 30 bushels to the acre have been raised by the use of these crabs composted with earth. It 

 has been thought by some that they injure the ground for the succeeding crops of corn or grass, 

 and that they promote the growth of sorrel. Many persons, however, have continued their use 

 for years in succession with success. William J. Bate, of Fishing Creek, uses them every year, 

 and with the best effects, in compost on early potatoes. A remarkably fine and thrifty young 

 orchard of his has been manured principally with crabs in their raw state. Mr. Springer, of Dyer's 

 Creek, has used them for a number of years, composting them with sawdust, coal-pit bottoms, 

 muck, and barnyard manure. With a compost of 7,000 crabs, twenty loads of muck, two coal bot- 

 toms, seven or eight loads of old hay, and manure applied on 6 acres of sandy loam, he raised 151 

 bushels of wheat. On another field, where the crop succeeding that manured with crabs did not 

 look thrifty, he sowed a light dressing of quick lime. The crop immediately began to improve, 

 and turned out to be an excellent one. Levi Corson, of Dyer's Creek, has an acre and a half of 

 sandy loam on which he has raised all the corn and wheat needed for the use of his family for the 

 last fifteen years. He has it in two fields, and raises corn in one and wheat in the other every 

 year, giving each field a two years' rotation. Occasionally he has plowed in the wheat stubble 

 and raised a crop of buckwheat, thus getting three crops from the same ground in two years. 

 The straw and stalks have all been taken off the field, and the only manure that has been applied 

 has been a compost of 2,000 crabs with eight or nine loads of sods from the fence corners, each 

 year. His corn crop has been at the rate of from 30 to 50 bushels an acre. The compost was all 

 put on the wheat, no manure being used on the corn. The sorrel grew very rank in the corn, but 

 by the diligent use of the hoe it was kept down. His first crop of wheat on 90 rods of ground was 

 16 bushels, weighing 65 pounds to the bushel, and his wheat has usually yielded at the rate of 

 from 25 to 30 bushels an acre. He finally stopped gathering crabs and used lime, but his crops 

 were not as heavy as before. He thought they were falling off while using crabs, but his neigh- 

 bors said they had not fallen off more than was due to the variation in seasons. 



" It is presumed these cases are sufficient to show the value of this manure. In regard to the 

 methods of applying crabs there is room for much improvement. Allowing them to lie in piles and 

 decompose by themselves is very wasteful, and the composts which are usually made have by far 

 too small a quantity of absorbent material added, as is evident from the escape of the gases from 

 the heaps, as well as from the results of experience in making composts in other localities. The 

 crabs when alive weigh 3 or 4 pounds, and when thoroughly dried they average nearly, if not quite, 



