Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/207

Rh a seeming desertion sometimes occurs, which may continue for several seasons. Shark River is a good crabbing-ground, and yet it is subject to a closing up at the mouth by the washing up of the sea. When this occurs, the water is too fresh, and the crabs may perish.

The crabbers are now working more systematically. They build pens, or cars, out in the water, the top being opened to the light, and the sides being latticed, or made of laths, which admit the water freely. The bottom is covered with clean stones or coarse gravel. Into these the crabs are put as fast as caught, whether shedding or not; and, as fast as they shed, they are taken out.

As mentioned, our edible crab literally backs out of the shell; that is, it comes out at an opening behind. The Limulus, or horseshoe-crab, acts directly contrariwise. The shell cracks open at the front, and the animal emerges forward, instead of from behind, or backward. In fact, the structure of the shell makes this the only possible mode. A few years ago, the officers superintending the building of the fort at Sandy Hook became greatly interested at witnessing this exuviation of the shell of Limulus Polyphemus, and they declared that the fellow was spewing himself out of his mouth!

But we have two others to introduce—a brace of queer creatures they are, truly; and one of them is a positively "crusty customer." Some call him the soldier-crab; and certainly, if agility and seeming-courage make up the martial element, then a valorous little fellow he is. The males have one hand enormously large. This, when closed upon the front of the body, is suggestive of the attitude of a violinist—hence we boys used to call it the fiddler-crab, Fig. 3. The naturalist



names it Gelasimus vocans, a name highly expressive of its attributes. Some have rendered the words "calling crab." This is too far short of their significance. The words are intended to indicate both the action of the crab and its effect upon the beholder. When alarmed, they go scuttling over the mud to their burrows, the males each holding his great claw aloft, and waving it in a manner that looks ludicrously like beckoning, or challenging, and at the same time