LIFE HISTORY OF THE BLUE CRAB. 407 
during the whole season some of them are spawning. Our experience is that we 
find more of the small crabs about March and April, although, as we stated above, ° 
some of them are found during the entire season. From the best information, nearly 
all the crabs, if not all, spawn in the rivers and afterwards come into salt water. We 
do not think they travel from this section northward, but, on the contrary, we think 
they generally come southward. 
Our opinion is that there is nothing so detrimental to the crab industry as dredg- 
ing for crabs in winter time, and what makes us feel so sure of it is the fact that 
aiter they are dredged in a certain location in the winter, the next season none or 
scarcely any of them are to be found there. They will not bed in the same place 
the succeeding winter. 
We are borne out in the opinion by our oldest and best crabbers, that generally 
about June and July we have a little different crab reach us here in Hampton 
Roads, which is generally called the ocean crab. It is larger than the one which we 
get earlier in the season, and is a much bluer crab. We can not say whether this 
crab comes from the north or south to us. 
Mr. Isaac H. Tawes, of Crisfield, Md., reports as follows: 
From what I can learn, the crabs spawn in the spring. I have been noticing them 
for several years. I always see the small baby crabs in May and June. I think the 
females mature during the winter and spawn in the spring. 
METAMORPHOSIS AND SUBSEQUENT GROWTH. 
The young crab when it first escapes from the egg is almost micro- 
scopic in size and of a very different appearance from the adult. It is 
known as a zoea larva.* It has a swollen, a 
globose body and a long, slender, segmented 
tail. The eyes are especially large and 
prominent and are borne on short, thick 
stalks. The shell which covers the head and 
body is prolonged downward between the 
eyes to form a long, slender, pointed ros- 
trum (cuts 1 and 2, 7.). On each side, near 
the middle of the shell, there is a smaller 
lateral spine (cut 1, 2.) and near the middle 
of the back there is a long, slender, curved 
spine (cut 1, d.). The tail or abdomen, 
which afterward becomes the ‘‘apron” of Ot Moya 
the adult crab, is longer than the body and NE Eig a apna 
is composed of six cylindrical segments; it — ctab. (After Brooks.) 
bears no appendages and ends in a large, forked telson (cuts 1 and 
2, ¢.). The tail is movable and assists the animal in swimming. At 
the front of the body, in the neighborhood of the mouth, there are 
“The following account of the metamorphosis of the crab and the figures which 
accompany it have been taken from Dr. W. K. Brooks’ Handbook of Invertebrate 
Zoology (S. E. Casino, Boston, 1882), with such revisions as have been necessary to 
adapt it for popular reading. 
