ASTACUS. 
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evidence of their pugnacity, look at their claws. One of 
them is always a great deal smaller than the other. Observe 
the left claw, with which the Lobster (like a human being 
sparring) wards off the blows aimed at him. Examine the 
right, or striking claw. That which now garnishes the 
dexter limb is not the real original cheliform, but a sup- 
plementary pair <jf pincers, thrown off long ago in some 
midnight submarine brawl. In case of emergency your 
thorough-bred Lobster parts with a claw, with as little con- 
cern as a man tearing the tail off his coat in a hedge, when 
a mad bull is after him. The late Sir Isaac Coffin, who 
used to tell a great number of odd stories, was once witness, 
he said, to a terrible battle between two armies of Lobsters 
in the harbour of Halifax, in Nova Scotia. They fought, 
he declared, with so much fury that the sea-shore was 
strewn with their claws. Sir Isaac was the admiral on the 
station, and ever afterwards, when he saw a Lobster, he 
pointed to the disparity between the claws in corroboration 
of his story ” 
The “tail,” or rather abdomen, of the Lobster, the joints 
of which fold so beautifully on each other, suggested to 
James Watt the idea of a flexible pipe, which he con- 
structed for some Water Company, 
