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distinction. It is an odd fact, that instead of courting admii ation 

 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 Frenchmnn who was 

 making a dictionary described a crab as a red fish that walks back- 

 wards. 'I'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 

 skin. There are ten jointed legs, and a short tail, and the com- 

 pound eyes are placed on moveable stalks. There are two antennae 

 or feelers. The breathing organs are not lungs nor spiracles as in the 

 insect and spider, but branchiae or gills arranged in plates (lamellae), 

 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 ic may be, one 

 from which he has cruelly dragged out its rightful owner. "All is 

 fair in love and war." 



