﻿74 FIELD AND FOREST. 



The abdominal legs, four on each side of the crab, serve to hold 

 the mass of eggs in place, and to give them the motion which bathes 

 and saturates them with the salt water in which they hatch. These 

 legs consist of two branches spreading widely apart, and resembling 

 flattened quills; the innermost is the broader and longer, consists of 

 two joints hinged together below the middle, and beset on both edges 

 with bundles of long stiff bristles which serve to keep the inner layers 

 of eggs in place. The outer branch tapers to a slender point, is 

 curved like a scimetar, and is bearded each side like the vanes of a 

 feather. This feathery expansion spreads off in all directions when 

 bathed in the water, and fixes the outer layers in such a manner as to 

 give to the mass a rounded contour. 



When ready to hatch the eggs, the female seeks some sheltered bay, 

 out of the reach of surf, where the water is salt and shallow, and after 

 settling a little way into the muddy, or even pure sand, she rests sta- 

 tionary and incubates until the young are hatched. The precise num- 

 ber of hours requisite for this purpose has not yet been ascertained. 



The season of incubating varies somewhat with the temperature of 

 the locality. In places where the water becomes warmed by the sun 

 in late June, they begin to incubate at that time ; but the great bulk 

 of the season properly lies. between the middle of July and the latter 

 part of August. We observed them in great numbers resting upon 

 the slightly muddy sand of the estuaries and inlets of the coast of Ac- 

 comac county, Virginia, in the early part of August. As the season 

 advances they become gradually less numerous, until about the first 

 of September, at which they time they have generally disappeared. 



After incubation the female usually, if not always dies, aud the dead 

 body is washed upon the beach by the tide to serve for food to the many 

 kinds of insects and other creatures which abound there. Every storm 

 throws huge piles of them upon the shore, and the fishermen's seines 

 drag multitudes to destruction. 



The males, however, are not so subejet to a short career ; they are 

 more active and vicious, swim and travel over long distances, and ven- 

 ture to ascend in the rivers and creeks almost to the point where the 

 fresh-water unites with the brackish or salt-water. 



My specimens of the first stage, or Zoea, having by accident been 

 lost or mislaid, I am unable at present to give a description of them. 

 The Megalops, or next stage of the young, propably one day old, is 



