796 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
which live along ocean beaches in both mud and sand breed 
sooner in the former. 
Male fiddlers were fighting each other throughout the sum¬ 
mer (fig. 1), but the chief point of interest in the inter-relations 
of the crabs was the behavior of the two sexes toward each other. 
The writer had never before observed fiddlers during the breed¬ 
ing season and was interested to see whether the males would 
wave their claws to attract the females, as Alcock (’02) asserts 
they do. Such waving was observed throughout the summer. 
None of the males were seen to dance about the females as they 
do in the Philippines (Pearse, T2) and in India (Alcock, ’92, 
’02), though they often lowered themselves on their legs and 
gave a sort of curtesy when a female approached. Each male 
stood at the mouth of his own hole when he waved, and, if a fe¬ 
male approached when he was elsewhere, he went to it, waving 
on the way. Waving consisted in flourishing the chelipeds up 
and down (sometimes only the great chela), and the motion was 
increased by alternately flexing the legs and standing on tiptoe 
when the chelipeds were down or up. Sometimes a male or 
two waved when no females were about, but if a, female walked 
through a well populated region every male, great and small, 
stood at the mouth of his burrow and honored her by gesticu¬ 
lating frantically with his claws (fig. 5). If she approached a 
particular hole the owner either entered with the evident inten- 
ion of inducing her to follow or he attempted to push her down 
ahead of him. No male was seen to grasp a female with his 
great chela or to attempt to use it in any way in his scuffles with 
her. Alcock (’92, ’02) maintains that the bright colors on the 
great claw r of the male fiddlers in India “have been acquired in 
order to attract and please the female.’ 7 The claws of both the 
species observed in Massachusetts are dirty white, which makes 
them conspicuous objects. Yet we must be cautious in assum¬ 
ing that colors which appear bright to out eyes are also bright 
when seen by a fiddler. Furthermore, I have noted that the 
waving of claws is commonly a sign of excitement in crabs in 
which they are neither remarkably large nor brightly colored 
(Sesarma, Macrophthaimus). The male fiddler waves his che- 
