Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Observations and Experiments on Carcinus Mænas
It is in such haunts, then, that fine specimens are got, whose powerful chelae have not acquired those colossal dimensions by one moulting or by two and numbers, male and female, line the fissures, quite secure from vision, but accessible to the entangling rod. After a storm, especially, great numbers are found crowded together. It sometimes happened, that, at this season (autumn), half-a-dozen females were ejected without a single male, each bearing its sub-abdominal burden of ova. Again, a large old male might be dislodged from some lonely nook, quite a bachelor-crab. More frequently, however, a few were found together at low water-mark and, if single, it generally had been moulting lately, and was in the condition vernacularly termed Soft back.' The females were frequently of a reddish or purplish hue. Even where no ova adhered to the abdominal feet. Lastly, the crab may be found deprived of one or both chelae, several of its smaller limbs, or may have them in various stages of growth, and, besides being subject to other mutilations, may have several additions - in the shape of a bunch of Sertularia, a group of Balani, numerous white-shelled Serpulae, or Sponges, clustered on its back.
In activity, Carcinus mamas is pre-eminent, the body is not too bulky for the long and powerful limbs. By nature, it is savage, fighting constantly with its own species of a similar sex, and mutilating each other often to a great extent. It hangs on by a chela when enraged, often to its destruction, but it is more careful of the one remaining. When in danger, it elevates the chelae, and makes off, if not prevented, with great alacrity, whether on land or in water, and is quick in detecting enemies. This animal stands in marked contrast to another of its kindred occasionally dislodged in the search, viz., Cancer pagurus, whose motions do not display anything like the' remarkable activity of Carcinus mamas, nor is its disposition so fierce. C. Pagurus is easily injured and dies whereas 0. Mamas survives great harm. The latter lives in a glass globe for ten or twelve days, deprived of all moisture, but that which it has in the branchiae, or derives from those of a fellow prisoner the former scarce lives a day or two.
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