CRABS AND SHEIMPS. 20T 



quired a sufficient maturity to swim about and get their 

 independent living. 



This receptacle — in -wliich you may see five or six 

 eggs — is freely open to the surrounding water, which 

 enters the slit edge of the shell, behind the tail. Per- 

 haps you wonder why the eggs are not washed out by 

 the respii-atory currents ; they are in fact maintained in 



DAPUNIA. 



their position only by a slender tongue-like projection 

 from the back of the parent, which appears to have that 

 special object. When, however, the young are ready 

 for freedom, the mother has but to depress her body a 

 little more than ordinary, when the door is opened, and 

 the young easily slip from the receptacle into the open 

 water. 



These tiny odd-looking sprawling things that you 

 see moving about by quick jerks in the same drop of 

 water, are the young recently hatched. They are quite 

 unlike their parent, having as yet no bivalve shell, no 

 abdomen, and only three pairs of limbs. The body is a 



