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NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



great claw aloft, and waving it in a manner that looks 

 ludicrously like beckoning, or challenging, and at the same 

 time threatening, and this, too, while in full and masterly 

 retreat. 



2. Each seems, as it might be, a Liliputian Falstaff ; 

 and, if rendered in Homeric strain, Gelasimus vocans 

 would signify the "laughter-provoking challenger." In- 

 deed, Gelasimus never sees anybody, whether great or small, 

 but forth he hurls his challenge in pantomime, for up goes 

 that threatening huge member, so that its owner appears 

 to be habitually bent on something high-handed. As 

 this swaying of the great fiddle-like claw seems to start and 



direct or animate 

 the retreat, it is lu- 

 dicrously suggestive 

 of a musical conduc- 

 tor beating time by 

 swaying a bass-viol 

 instead of his baton, 

 the effect of his ec- 

 centricity being to 

 cause a stampede of 

 all the fiddlers. 



3. This crab ex- 

 cavates holes in the earth, a male and a female occupying 

 one hole. Into this retreat it retires with astonishing ce- 

 lerity when alarmed, and, having gained its hole, it liter- 

 ally barricades the entrance, by turning round and closing 

 it up with its big hand, leaving just room enough for the 

 little keen eyes to keep a sharp lookout at whatever may 

 be passing. In these burrows they spend the winter, prob- 

 ably in hibernation. More than once, when pursuing the 

 tiddler, who, with fiddle aloft, ran swiftly, has the writer 

 had the luxury of a slip and fall on the slimy clay of Fid- 

 dler Town, as we called a certain place in the salt-meadows, 



Fiddler- Crab. 



