Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/208

196 threatening, and this, too, while in full and masterly retreat. Each seems, as it might be, a Liliputian Falstaff; and, if rendered in Homeric strain, Gelasimus vocans would signify the "laughter-provoking challenger." Indeed, Gelasimus never sees anybody, whether great or small, but forth he hurls his challenge in pantomime, for up goes that threatening huge member, so that its owner appears to be habitually bent on something high-handed. As this swaying of the great fiddle-like claw seems to start and direct or animate the retreat, it is ludicrously suggestive of a musical conductor beating time by swaying a bass-viol instead of his bâton, the effect of his eccentricity being to cause a stampede of all the fiddlers. This crab excavates holes in the earth, a male and a female occupying one hole. Into this retreat it retires with astonishing celerity when alarmed, and, having gained its hole, it literally barricades the entrance, by turning round and closing it up with its big hand, leaving just room enough for the little keen eyes to keep a sharp lookout at whatever may be passing. In these burrows they spend the winter, probably in hibernation. More than once, when pursuing the fiddler who, with fiddle aloft, ran swiftly, has the writer had the luxury of a slip and fall on the slimy clay of Fiddler Town, as we called a certain place in the salt-meadows, where these fiddlers lived. Those mishaps were really enjoyable—that is, to those who looked on.

There is a group of crabs which has a curious habit, made necessary on account of the unprotected condition of the hinder part of



their bodies. This is entirely naked; hence these crabs occupy the empty shells of sea-snails, winkles, and such univalves. It is called the hermit-crab, or Pagurus, by the systematists,Fig. 4. The most common species on the Atlantic coast is the little hermit—Pagurus longicarpus. A pair of nippers at the extremity of the tail, or naked abdomen,