FIDDLER- AND HERMIT-CRABS. 
MONG our first acquaintances of the sea-shore are sure 
to be a number of merry little sprites which do not 
seem to have yet mastered the lesson of walking straight 
ahead. Their movements will be seen to be in a direction at 
right angles to that towards which the head points. It is a 
very interesting sight to watch these apparently one-sided 
creatures hurrying off in their lateral progression towards 
their burrows in the sand or mud, or in quest of food. Pass 
them, and you will be surprised to see how quickly some of 
them will reverse their motion, seemingly without so much 
as pausing to glance at their pursuer, their machinery appear- 
ing to have given out at one end, thus compelling them to 
reverse and travel back over their old courses. 
These little Fiddler- or Calling-crabs, as they are termed, 
are the most pronounced offenders against the commonly. 
accepted rule of proper walking. Scattered all over the 
salt marshes and mud-flats, at about high-water mark, 
may be noted their burrows, which are about as large asa 
thrust made by an umbrella point, and from which can be 
frequently seen the little animal peeping forth, preparatory 
to making a sally. At another part of the flat, where the 
noise of your footsteps has not given signals of danger, 
hundreds of crabblings are busy with their out-door occupa- 
tions. Draw near to them, and away they scamper to their 
dwellings, males and females intermingled promiscuously, the 
former recognizable by the undue development of one of the 
claws, which is carried transversely in front of the head. 
When the animal is provoked, this claw is brandished in a 
