The paper nautilus has more than its little sail to assist its progression; it is able to eject water against the waves, and so move onward. They are timid and cautious creatures, live in families, and are almost always found far out at sea: they never approach the shore.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Ocean and its Living Wonders (continued).
The Crustaceans, a Crusty Set—Young Crabs and their Peculiarities—Shells and no Shells—Powers of Renewal—The Biter Bit—Cocoa-nut eating Crabs—Do Crabs like Boiling?—The Land Crab and his Migrations—Nigger Excitement—The King Crab—The Hut Crab—A True Yarn—The Hermit or Soldier Crab—Pugnaciousness—Crab War and Human War—Prolific Crustaceans—Raising Lobster-pots—Technical Differences—How do Lobsters shed their Shells?—Fishermen’s Ideas—Habits of the Lobster—Its Fecundity—The Supply for Billingsgate—The Season-“Lobster Frolics”in British North America—Eel-grass—Cray-fish, Prawns, and Shrimps.
In the Crustacea we find the lowest form of articulate animals. They possess feet, breathe through gills, and derive their name from their hard crusty covering, which is mainly carbonate of lime with colouring matter. They have nearly all of them claws, which most of them know well how to employ offensively. “They have been compared,” says [pg 151]Figuier, “to the heavily-armed knights of the middle ages—at once audacious and cruel; barbed in steel from head to foot, with visor and corselet, arm-pieces and thigh-pieces—scarcely anything, in fact, is wanting to complete the resemblance.” They possess the power of throwing off their calcareous covering, when they become, for the nonce, as vulnerable as they had been before formidable.[41]
“Among all the curious and quaint forms of animal life to be found in the sea,” says Lord, “few for grotesque oddity can equal the baby crabs, or Zoëa, as they are sometimes called. These interesting infants are not the least like their papa or mamma, and no respectable or fully-matured male or female crab would ever own them as his or her offspring. An elfish little creature is the juvenile crab, with a head scarcely deserving the name, and a pair of goggle bull’s-eyes as of two policemen’s lanterns rolled into one, a tail vastly too long for him, and an anti-garotte spear, quite as long as his absurd little body, attached to the spot where his coat-collar should be.... Master Crab’s internal economy is just as curious as his external skeleton. One pair of jaws one would be disposed to think sufficient for any living creature of reasonable requirements, but he possesses eight, and instead of exposing his teeth to the examination of the critical in matters of dentition, he carries them safely stowed away in the interior of his stomach, where they would be excessively hard to get at in cases of crustacean toothache. With such appliances as these the food cannot well be otherwise than perfectly masticated. A crab’s liver is an odd organ to contemplate, and constitutes a considerable portion of the soft interior of the shell-like box in which the heart and other viscera are lodged. That well-known delicacy known as the ‘cream’ or ‘fat’ of the crab is liver, and nothing else. The lungs, or gills, are formed by those fringe-like appendages popularly known as the ‘dead men’s fingers.’ The shell-shifting process before referred to is common to all crustaceans; and our friend the crab, when he feels his corselet getting rather tight for him, manages by some extraordinary process not only to extricate himself from it, together with his shell-gauntlets, and the powerful nippers with which he is provided, but performs other feats, compared with which those of the Davenport Brothers sink into utter insignificance.”
Nearly all the crustaceans are hardy and destructive, and fight not merely their enemies, but among each other. It matters little to them whether they lose a claw or a tail, for after a few weeks of repose those members grow again. Tandon records the fact that lobsters “which in an unfortunate encounter lost a limb, sick and debilitated, reappear at the end of a few months with a perfect limb, vigorous, and ready for service.” On the Spanish coast a certain crab is caught for its claw alone, which is considered excellent eating; this is pulled off, and the mutilated animal thrown back into the sea, likely enough to be retaken, and the same process repeated at some future time. Crustaceans are nearly all carnivorous, and are by no means particular what they eat. Some of them, however, show considerable appreciation for the oyster. Sometimes they eat each other. Mr. Rymer Jones tells a story of one which attacked and commenced to eat one [pg 152]slightly smaller than himself, and was then himself attacked and eaten by a companion, realising the old adage concerning fleas—
“And these have smaller still to bite ’em,
And so proceed, ad infinitum.”