THE LOBSTER. 



145 



lobster possesses. Who can doubt that the poor thing 

 feels pain when he is plunged into boiling water ? Of 

 course an animal which has so much machinery, and 

 makes so many motions, must have a great many strong 

 muscles. You know that the anodon, or mussel, moved 

 his foot and his shell by means of his elastic straps, or 

 muscles. Some of the strongest muscles in the lob- 

 ster's body are those that work the mill (Fig. 118). 

 The heart-bag, or pericardium, is also fastened to the 

 shield (carapace) by strong muscular folds (Fig. 122). 

 The muscles of the body, or abdomen, are attached to 

 the shell (exo-skeleton) and are of two chief kinds, 

 those which bend the abdomen and those which straight- 

 en it. Those that bend are called flexors, and those 

 that straighten are called extensors. By the action of 

 the benders, or flexors, and the straighteners, or ex- 

 tensors, the lobster makes its way through the water, 

 and it is greatly helped by the tail-fin. By a single 

 down-stroke of the telson the lobster can send itself 

 backward twenty-five feet. But the lobster's muscles, 

 besides being very useful to him, are also very useful 

 to us, as the muscles are the parts of the body that we 

 eat, though I think the doctors would call them more 

 hurtful than useful ; they are of a beautiful pink color, 

 and when you look at a piece of muscle under the mi- 

 croscope, you can see that it is prettily marked by light 



