FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Arer; ST -1, 1881. 



grew low.spiril ed and sad r>f lienrl if a urt ek had gone by 

 wiihrm" his gouging out somebodv's eye or Siting off some- 

 bod) 'sear. He wi 1 accommodate any nne. wh u happens lo 

 be ooltlng for a digtwb&mw with the utmost, willingness nod 

 on ihe shortest notice, and generally without regard to dif- 

 ference of srze. In fact, when lie gets "maoy' wbtoh ho 

 does on i he slightst provocaiion, he is i|te maddest, ihing on 

 ear h. His InctnOfl of carrying on warfare, alBO, is peculiar, 

 and trying bolh to his adversary's eves and feelings. 

 JUoti •ijif=s, tie alio • s the laliet to approach within a certain 

 distance, when, suddenly ami without warn i-og, hesp>inga up 

 and lashes at him with his daws, which, if they miss their 

 vimrk, ela-h together, like the old-time clang of sword on 

 helmet. The strength of those claws is prodigious: a little 

 baby, ts big Ha a I U roil piece, can rlraw blood like a Iftech, 

 and a fu Ugrown crab can cut through the ll ather of a boot, 

 with ease. When llie claws hjtveotice fastened on their 

 prey, 00 power ihai dues not break them can force them 

 asuii'hr, It is supposed the word i-.ruxtuctan, which the 

 scientific gentry apply to these nnimals, is only a learned 

 cefeieni • 'heir crnsty disposition, so active is the r 

 orig u I sin Anoiiicr Idiosyncrasy maintains their evil 

 reputation. Bo long as one of thorn is held by any part, of 

 its person, it will hold dn to anything else it can r. ach, and 

 will let go only when itself is released. So, if the enterpris- 

 ing reader should ea eh a crab by the hind-flipper, he may 

 make a quaint and amusing experiment. There 18 a little 

 danger unending the attempt in the outset, for these inde- 

 pendent crustaceans act on the noH me tangere motto, and do 

 not allow strangers " fooling round" their hind-flippers any- 

 more than that oilier an -mat of an allied spirit, the mule, 

 and are apt t reach down for you as you reach out, for them. 

 B t, il 'you manage deftly, they surrender to fate, and fold 

 their arms resignedly across their breasts, like a good man 

 when his hour 1ms come. This submissive state of mind is 

 DO dei-p-Keau-ri. however, and. if, after getting one at such a 

 disadvantage, you hold it where it, can reach the flipper of a 

 brother of the same race, it Will feel for him with instant dis- 

 pfttCh, and, hav rig once clinched its claw, will cling fast 

 with noble resolution. Then the second crab can bo ap- 

 proached to a thi d, and will seize it in the same manner, 

 and so on till a string two yards long, or as high as the ex- 

 perimenter can i each, will lie formed, each firmly fa : ', i 

 to the one below, i>ith a death-grip ihat never relaxes until 

 some limb breaks, Or you Jet go Of the first in line— a chain 

 of obstinate ferocity that ihe's'udent of morals could have 

 much pleasure in investigating provided he did not approach 

 it so closely as to come within reach of a disengaged cIhw. 

 Th- purely unscientific person would pr badly only wonder 

 why a era'i should apparently be, entirely satisfied to be 

 pinched itself, provided it could pinch someone else, parsing 

 along an injuty as the good are expected to 'ransmit a favor. 

 have, however, a means uf escape which is peculiarly 

 crustacean. Tie good boot says, "If a limb offend thee, 

 cut it oil and cist it from thee, for it is better to lose a limb 

 than that the entire body should fall into hell-fire." Men 

 raids art on this excellent m ItO, although it was addressed 

 to them, hut the crab community has taken it up with en- 

 thusiasm. When a crab is reslrai ed by one claw until the 

 position grows irksome, or I, is "dander gets fiz" beyond re- 

 straint, he suddenly snaps off that member, and, leaving it 

 to his more powerlul adversary, slips away and saves the rest 

 of his carcass. If humanity could kick off its legs whenever 

 there was a twinge of gout in a big toe, or could fling away 

 its arms when it had uu furl her use fp. them, and arms and 

 legs would grow a Sin, as quietly as crustacean claws, the 

 praciice suggested by the Bible might be more generally fol- 

 Jowe.il, and cer»iniy the pobce force would have much 

 difficulty in ma mcling its prisoners. Who c uld properly 

 de^cri e l he feel ugs of i >ne of our guardians of the peace if a 

 criminal whom he is hauling lustily to the 1 H'fc-up, "running 

 him in," as the vernacular hath it, should Suddenly leave his 

 mana led hands and arms us a parting gift, and dart down 

 the street with feet made mote- active by the lessened weight 

 they had t i carry ? fiut to man is not given such a precious 

 privileg ; he cannot even imagine how he should go about 

 to shake himself clear ot his bones ; but the crab makes no 

 hones about it; he does not strain after an effect, dots not 

 slash -round nor strike Hie offending member — he simply 

 drops it, as a fashionable Italy would crop an undesirable nc 

 quaiutnnee. it Si cms |o be an (ICt of mental volition rather 

 than of physical effori . Having no further use for that limb 

 h lops il olf, or, finding himself overcome by his enemy, 

 like a brave but vanquished foe he surrenders his arms, arid 

 thus saves life and honor. And then, having got rid of a 

 member in lies easy fashion, he recovers it "with equal 

 facility. The e are no on -armed pensioners on the 

 crustacean pay-roll, no empty sleeves going about the 

 subaqueous Streets playing on aqu.lic. band-organs, (II ap- 

 pealing to the sympathies of all crabdom, no one-legged 

 heroes are left to slump it through life in a feeble search for 

 daily provender, fvo sooner has the cliw been cast aside 

 than another proceeds to grow, hardly off with the old love 

 before he is on with the new, and a few months sees the 

 cripple as sound and »li le and stout and hearty as ever. 

 All ye who have toothaches, earaches or headaches, nil ye 

 who have felons on your fingers or gout in your toes — who 

 have bed arms or lees on the altar of your country — all, in- 

 tact, who have a limb too few by consequence of its loss, or 

 a binb too many by virlue of its bad behavior, go to llie crab, 

 observe his ways, and be sad that you cannot go and do like- 

 wise ; that you cannot shed your miseries or tecover from 

 your misfortu es as eas'ly as he. 



Kh urc has done n rich" for thi-, lively and energetic crusta- 

 cean ; am ig othei favors, it has conferred on him a com- 

 plete suit, of armor. Ife not merely cairies his house but his 

 castle on his back ; he is invariably armed cap-a-pie, so that 

 enemies cannot, break in and steal his life away, and he may 

 indulge his naturally warlilie temper without danger of ex- 

 termination. He is the knight-errant of the watery world, 

 and backs down front no danger; his nearest, imitation of a 

 ffitrea being to slip off sideways. But this comfort of a coat 

 ( f mail has its d sa>!vantflges; the crab grows, but Ids castle 

 d PS ' ot. There comes a time in lite life of every crab, and 

 it comes veiy often, al least once a year, and perhaps much 



otiener, when he has not, only grown tOO bigfor llfs I tB, 



but loi, large fur his iron skin, wh -n he '■ must swell or 

 bust " when the very weight of his best prfllecliou, hi? 

 chesl-probelor, crushes him, and he is Cabined, ciibhed, 



confined, within a limit nil too small for bis swelling ptopo - 



lions. In plain word-, he finds himself in a very light place 



and many a less enterprising animal would give up tin- 



siruggo, "and perish like ihe' old i inn State criminal who 

 stood mate al his trial under the ]>i:irce tiwe at, forte. But no! 

 so the !"-■ ii. oho i al*aj equal to the occasion r whatever 

 the occasion may be. He does not cut his coat; to his cloth, 

 fiticll. nor give up hope of ex- 



pansion, nor surrender the confidence of a grander and 

 broader future — he simply sheds that s-kip, He moves from 

 that house, be leaves bis armor for a smaller man ; he casts 

 Off I he past, ami all its surroundings, like a corner-grocery 

 millionaire when he enters Fifth Avemi ■ as a leader of so- 

 ciety. To an ordinary uioiial. endowed with no more 

 capacity than an ordinary mortal possesses, the withdrawal 

 of a ' rah from its shell would seem an impossibility, but the 

 crab lexicon must be as deficient as that of youth, for the 

 crustacean certainly performs the feat. The claws and legs 

 and lltppers are much larger at the exlreuoties than ihey are 

 al Ihe Johns, the claws especially being often a half-dozen 

 times as large round, yet the larger part somehow pa scs the 

 aairower, either yielding to Compression or forcing an en- 

 largement of the smaller portion. The eyes are round pro- 

 tuberances, Ijlte knobs placed at the aad of delicate filaments 

 one quoier as thick as themselves, yet they are pulled 

 through the unyielding tube which incloses the filament be- 

 tween t hern and the body. Every portion, even llie finest 

 and most delicate, not thicker in places than a bar, is safely 

 and successfully withdrawn, and the case is left with all its 

 purls and numerous partitions -perl ectj as complete and un- 

 injured a9 if the animal had died and decomposed, and its 

 flesh had been washed away. The act completed, and to one 

 side lies the shell, to the other lies the crab, alive, hut feeble, 

 helpless and unresisting, a prey to any foe, even ihemi-erable 

 little minnow, who can bite a piece out of his exposed sides 

 or run off with the end of one of his claws. The armor is 

 gone and the warrior knows it, his courage and pluck have 

 gone with it ; he can now only " suffer and be still." There 

 is danger in every ripple of the wave, in every motion of the 

 water, in the approach of every living thing, bird, beast or 

 fish. Death hangs over him like a pall, and he cannot even 

 make "an effort to escape. His limbs are too feeble to sup- 

 port him, he cannot run, walk, crawl nor swim ; he is aware 

 of this, and makes no attempt to move, either to fly. or to 

 tight, but allows himself lo be picked up, or crushed, or 

 eaten, without the semblance of a protest— and jus; then 

 how good he is to eat ; how other fishci love him, what, bait, 

 he makes, what a delicacy man considers him; how the 

 wading birds look for him, and the big and little fishes "go 

 for him !" His days of power have for the moment passed, 

 antl it is no wouder his nature is perverted, for in those 

 hours of helples-ness he suffers wrongs and erne ties enough 

 to cmb tier ihe temperof a race of angels. Every creature's 

 fa< gs are turned against him, and it is only natural that 

 when he recovers his strength he turns his pincers against 

 every creature. 



Al this point another serious question presents itself, as 

 serious in many of its aspects as that at the head of this 

 article, and that Question is ; Which is the best to eat, a 

 soft or a hard crab? On so important and far reaching a 

 matter, a matter that affects the happiness of every man, 

 woman and child who eats crabs (and what man, woman or 

 chid fails to eat crabs if he, she or it can git erabB to eat?) 

 — on so tremendous a question it, will not do to "make any 

 mistake. And yet who can tell ? When cooks disagree, 

 who shall decide ? And still how terrible if. will be if after 

 we have all eaten soft crabs as the "nothing further" of 

 gustatory bliss, have sighed for soft, crabs, have sung of soft 

 crab- 1 , have sorrowed after soft-crab suppers, if after all this 

 pride of stomach a future Soyi r, or Blot, or Savarin shall 

 arise and tell us we were mistaken, that a soft crab does not 

 compare in flavor, in delicacy, in excellence, with a hard 

 crab ; that we have all erred and lived our livrs antl ruined 

 our digestions in vain! When such undeniable authority 

 shall prove to us that our entire treatment of the crab was a 

 miserable error, that we never' should have established in- 

 dustries to convert ihe hard shell into the soft, that our dis- 

 tinctions between a "shedder" and a '"burster" and a 

 "buckram" were but wasted learning. What shall we say 

 ami do then ; how turn the hands of tune back and make up 

 for our lost crabbed opportunities ? Yet there are those 

 among us who believe that such will he the final fate of all 

 who prefer sofl crabs to hard. 



Bullet us return to our crab, leaving his comparative excel- 

 lence aside for th-it of Irs comparative anatomy. The 

 moment he is out of his old house he swells himself : he as- 

 sumes al) the rotundity that the utmost possible consumption 

 of water will attain. This is not ouiof pride at Hie extraor- 

 dinary feat he has just accomplished, but as a precautionary 

 measure for the future. Upon his size now dep-rnls the size 

 of hi> new coat which tailor Nature is making and fitting for 

 him, and he must leave room for all the good dinners he in- 

 tends to eat for the next many months. Once incased again 

 in his fresh garments, he will have no further chance to ex- 

 pand except by another revolution like the one he has just 

 goue through. Having swollen, he lies still till his c ial 

 hardens into mail, which it does in a few days. At Uiis time 

 • cents another strange event which no man has successfully 

 explained. A hard crab is very frequently seen swimming 

 with a soft one in his arms ; now, the reason for this is some- 

 thing that " no fellow has found out." It may be love or it 

 may be hunger, it may be ihat the hard shell means to make 

 the soft shell a partner of his bosom or his stomach ; he or 

 she holds ihe other strained to his or her breast, so that when 

 one is captured the other is taken also, and it has beeu oh- 

 seived that the two arc generally, if not invariably, of 

 different sex. So tlvs strange romance may he founded, 

 like so many human ones, on " the old old story," or il may 

 be but a repetition of a still older story reaching way back 

 to the diys of Adam immediately on his expulsion from 

 paradise, the struggle for life. As our great poet Joaquin 

 Miller so beau' if ully sings : 



" o master dear, I greatly fear 



car 'c.r th ' Mill ectiie 10 harm, 

 Fori saw last n ah l the 'hard crab 1 

 With the ' s Jt'r crab ' on its ami :" 



This eccentricity may therefore signify the end of that soft 

 crab, or it mav intimate ihe beginning of a long line of both 

 soft and hard crahs extendi, g down "through all the genera- 

 tions." For, after all, crabs are but mortal, and are dom- 

 inated by the power of love and hunger like human Ii fogs j 

 they may have wonderful gifts, hut ihey are subject to a 

 common fate, and food and tolly fill as much of ihe,r lives as 

 ilc v do of man's. 



We all know the famous definition of a crab, that it was a 

 "red fish that went backward "— and the criticism, to the 

 effect that there were only three errors in the ex-plaua ion, as 

 a crab was neither red nor a fish nor did it go backward. 

 But thi-, is ovcr-nic ty. The best part of a crab's existence, 

 il not of his life, is when he is red— tur only after he is 

 cooked do in iff of our nice know him. My heal h- turns 

 from tr-iyish-green to radiant red; he is purified and im- 

 proved by fire. The most skeptical will admit that, if he is 

 not absolutely a fish, a seale-ti-b, with the flesh outside and 

 the bones inside, he is a sort of fish, a " variation," us science 

 I terms it, a shell-fish, win 



smsible nature, prefers lo wear the bones outside and keep 

 the flesh safely housed within. Moreover, if the icluhyolog- 

 ically learned were reqiiied to define accurately and posi- 

 tively what a fish L«, and to determine if th-y would include 

 whales equally with stukh backs ad the viviparous sp cies 

 of the California coas- with the llying-fi-h md the do phins, 

 and if they would accept the curious double-' yed species of 

 ihe West Indies, which have one-half of the optic lens 

 adapted to looking through the atmosphere and the other 

 ha f for use under water, they would certainly experience 

 trouble in keeping out of so large and liberal a cla<-s our per- 

 severing and interesting subject, the crab. And, as to his 

 mode of progression, did not so great and fi-hy an authority 

 as the "melancholy Dane" in Shakcsp are say, "If, like a 

 crab, you could go backward f" Taking all this together, 

 therefore, it is not surprising that a crub should carry some 

 of his obliquities with him, even into a dictionary. He often 

 gets into strange places, and does strange things when there. 

 For the length of the muddy salt-water creeks of our coast 

 he digs holes and makes narrow but comforiable houses, 

 where he lies and gazes out all day long upon the iuleresti g 

 though p'acid scenery of his watery realm, wailing, poss biy, 

 for a careless minnow to come within reach of his claws, but 

 with apparently as little on his mind as a fashionable New 

 York loafer, hanging around the doors of a city hold, or 

 staring vacantly, with feet higher than head, from its sitting- 

 room window, on the passing Broadway pedestrians. In ihe 

 bays where the mud of the creek is replaced bv sand, he digs 

 rimilar holes on the shallow flats, and, backing down into 

 them, pa-ses the d-iys peering into the sky and wailing till the 

 comet shall fall into the sun and rahe the temperatme of 

 the water to boiling heat, so that he can I e ready cooked for 

 the salamander who is to take the, place of man when that 

 interesting event shall have occurred. At least this is all 

 that we know that he does, exced when we walk about bare- 

 footed in his neighborhood, when we discover ihat, in taking 

 to housekeeping, he has not surrendered his predatory propen- 

 sities. It may be that he retires in doors, like a mode-t 

 animal, to change his shirt — anything may be, or may not 

 be, in reference to his motives and conduct — hut, if he does, 

 the difficulties of the operation mu-t be greatly increased by 

 the closeness of his quarters. There is scarcely r om for 

 himself, and cerainly not for himself and his shell, when he 

 has cast off the latter, and his struggles to get out of his 

 covering, which at, the best are severe and exhausting, would 

 be rendered twice as bard in so limited a space. Still, he has 

 an odd way of getting in'o odd places for odd purposes. 

 What could have induced ihe subjects of Pnaraoh when, 

 three thousand five hundred years ago, they were erecting a 

 monument to the glories of their ruler's reign, to pi >ce under 

 that monument four crabs? They were dou itless an intelli- 

 gent and civdized people ; but what connec ion cou d the 

 highest intelligence and most perfect civilization discover 

 bei ween a crab and an obelisk? There are few points of 

 similarity between these objects, and the most casual ob- 

 server will note many differences. An obelisk does not seem, 

 by any na'ural process, to suggest a crab, nor a crab an 

 obeli-k. Our American predecessors, the wild Indians of 

 our coas', must have captured, killed and eaten crabs, for a 

 time during Yvhich "the memory of man runneth not to ihe 

 contrary," and yet, there is no evidence that they were in the 

 habit of erecting obelisks. Possibly the engineers of the 

 ancient Egyptians were a jocose or sarcastic ntee, and thus 

 covertly conveyed to future times an alb gorical intimation of 

 the cruel and crabbed charac er of the Pharnonic govern- 

 ment, Or the great kings themselves may have said, in their 

 plenitude of pride, that, as the world is earned on the back 

 of a tortoise — as all the world knows — their kingdom should 

 be borne on the back of that far nobler and higher animal, 

 the crab. 



But i hose speculations are carrying us away from the main 

 purpose of this paper, and lea' ling us almost to forget the 

 question that was to be answered. For our better enlighten- 

 ment we hive taken a casual and cu-sory look into the moral 

 and physical conformation of the creature. We have carr ed 

 the reader " where crabs grow," but it is necessary to draw a 

 line somewhere, and we cannot enter the vast field of the 

 idealistic, symbolical, and imaginative. What we. want is a 

 simple answer to a plain inquiry, and can scarcely he ex- 

 pected to look back three thousand years and search ihrongh 

 idl the realms of fancy to find it. We desire to keep the 

 reader to the point, and Jtot allow him or her to stray off into 

 byways and roundabout lanes, enticing and attractive as they 

 may appear. The question is, Why does the «rab go side- 

 ways? And, if the reader is prepared to "give it up " by 

 this time, we will furnish the only and correct reply, that is, 

 the only reply which the present sta'e of cab sciencfl accepts 

 as correct — for, as to the future, science reserves to itself ihe 

 right to change its views as freely as it has chang d them 

 about every other problem on every other conceivable ques- 

 tion concerning the "heavens and the earth and Ihe wa ers 

 under the earth," and every living, moving, breathing or iu- 

 auima'e thing therein or thereabout. But at present science 

 and experience unite in saying that a crab goes sideways for 

 the reason, and no other — and a good reason it seems to be 

 — ihat a crab can go in no other way. For, judging by 

 what we know of a crab's disposition, if there was asny other 

 way in which it could go, it would go that way. Tun's 

 all. And if any one has a better reason let him present it, 

 or "forever after hold his peace." 



THE HOOP SNAKE. 



Nbw Haves, Conn., July 23. 

 E&ttor Forett and Stream: 



Suppose that you now open a discussion on the natural and 

 myth.cal his'ory of the hoop snake. It has been my custom 

 Yvhen traveling through any part of the country to talk with 

 the people on na ural history subjects, and the snakes have 

 no sooner been brought forward than the hoop snake inva- 

 riably comes rolling in. 



No one has ever seen one of the animals in question, but 

 few men are so far behind in tne knowledge of the ways of 

 of serpents as not, to have " heard of" some wonderful facts 

 connect ed with this cousin of the sea serpent. 



I do not believe there is a town in the United States that 

 does not contain innumerable believers in the hoop snake, 

 and where the various lgends have originated is as much a 

 mystery as the creature itself. 



'I he naturalists all know that this snake is an utter impos- 

 sibility, but the penple in general are equally certain that their 

 great uncles and brother-in-laws have had experiences with 

 the species. 



Let all persons who are familiar with any points relating to 

 the hoop snake com ribute their knowledge to Fokkst and 

 ^TPij.YAt, and we shun -• ■■ BBtiug matter. 



MAHK Wl'iN'e, 



