Crab

a popular name used to designate a large number of crustaceans--shellfish. The crabs are to be distinguished from lobsters, crayfish, prawns, and shrimps by shortness of body. The abdomen or so-called tail of the body is reduced in size and is folded under the thorax, giving the body a broad, stout appearance. Crabs have stalk eyes and ten jointed legs. The front pair of legs is developed into large pincer-like claws. In the case of marine crabs one pair of legs takes the form of fin-like swimmerets. Crabs can scrabble over the sand in any direction, but they prefer to step sidewise. They have stout bodies covered with a firm shell, and look not unlike spiders in armor. There are many species not closely related. There are marine crabs and land crabs, swimming crabs and crawling crabs. There are large crabs and small crabs,--giant crabs, with arms so long that they open eighteen feet at the stretch, and peacrabs so small that they are able to live with the oyster in its shell. Some crabs live near the salt water; others live in it. Some species live on vegetable matter; other species, on snails, minnows, small shell-fish, and carrion. Anything fleshy, dead or alive, they crowd into the stomach with their pincers. The stomach is furnished with horny projections. It contracts and works like the gizzard of a chicken to crush and grind food.

Crabs are great scavengers. At some seaside resorts they render service in keeping the shore clean. Shoals of them come up at night and act as scavengers. Crabs are of many colors, blue, red, purple, and green. Some are phosphorescent. The blue crab is esteemed for food, and may be found in the markets of seaside cities. It is taken by letting a bit of meat down into the water by a string. The crab seizes the meat with its pincers and holds on tenaciously until it is drawn to the surface, when it is an easy matter to take it with a landing net before it lets go.

The sand crab has the color of sand, and hastens to bury itself to the eyes if a footstep approaches. Where a seashore was alive with them a moment before, nothing can be seen by the stranger, though many a pair of eyes are fixed upon him. The fiddler crab--not a true crab--fairly swarms along the shallow ditches of the Gulf States. It gets its name from one abnormally large pincer and one abortive one, suggesting a fiddle and a bow. The hermit crab, another distant relative, thrusts its soft tail into some empty shell for protection. The larger it grows the larger the shell it needs, a truth so impressed on the hermit that it squabbles with its neighbors constantly. A large hermit has been known to force a dozen other hermits to allow him to try on their shells, only to go back to his own as the best after all.

The land crabs of the West Indies hide in holes in the daytime. At night they come out and pinch off the young shoots of the sugar-cane. They are so numerous that planters regard them as a serious pest.

The largest crab known is the spider crab of Japan. Its scuttles about on the floor of the ocean 2,000 feet under water. It is said to have a spread of eighteen feet from claw to claw.

See Crayfish Crabapple, a close relative of the apple. There are not less than seventy species. The crabapple has handsome leaves and beautiful fragrant flowers. The hawthorn of the English poets--the pride of English hedgerows--is a crabapple. The "crabs" or crabapples of our orchards are merely small, hardy kinds of apples adapted to northern latitudes, and brought, several of them at least, from Siberia. It would save confusion if we could use the English word hawthorn for our small fruited trees that are not apples. See Apple; Hawthorn