Caryatid

“ I have encountered two thousand five hundred chariots, and as soon as I am in their midst, they are overthrown before my mares. Not one of all these people has found a hand wherewith to fight; their hearts sink within their breasts, fear paralyses their limbs; they know not how to throw their darts, they have no strength to hold their lances. I precipitate them into the water like as the crocodile plunges therein ”

“ The posterior cephalic and the thoracic appendages (5–14) elongate and gradually approach the form which they possess in the adult. I have not been able to discover, at any period of development, an outer division or exopodite in any of the five posterior thoracic limbs. And this is a very remarkable circumstance, inasmuch as such an exopodite exists in the closely allied lobster in the larval state; and, in many of the shrimp and prawn-like allies of the crayfish, a complete or rudimentary exopodite is found in these limbs, even in the adult condition. ”

“ Caryll observed—and be it known that he had the very shrewdest eye for a woman, as became one of the race from which on his mother's side he sprang—that she was middling tall, chastely slender, having, as he judged from her high waist, a fine, clean length of limb. ”

“ The number of the somites, and of the appendages, and their general character and disposition, are in fact the same. But, in the prawn, the abdomen is much larger in proportion to the cephalothorax; the basal scale, or exopodite of the antenna, is much larger; the external maxillipedes are longer, and differless from the succeeding thoracic appendages. The first pair of these, which answers to the forceps of the crayfish, is chelate, but it is very slender; the second pair, also chelate, is always larger than the first, and is sometimes exceedingly long and strong (fig. 71, B) ”

“ Thus we see that the crayfish has a jointed and segmented body, the rings of which it is composed being very obvious in the abdomen, but more obscurely traceable elsewhere; that it has no fewer than twenty pairs of what may be called by the general name of appendages; and that these appendages are turned to different uses, or are organs of different functions, in different parts of the body. The crayfish is obviously a very complicated piece of living machinery. But we have not yet come to the end of all the organs that may be discovered even by cursory inspection. ”

“ The crayfish swims by the help of its abdomen, and the hinder pairs of abdominal limbs; walks by means of the four hinder pairs of thoracic limbs; lays hold of anything to fix itself, or to assist in climbing, by the two chelate anterior pairs of these limbs, which are also employed in tearing the food seized by the forceps and conveying it to the mouth; while it seizes its prey and defends itself with the forceps. The part which each of these limbs plays is termed its function and it is said to be the organ of that function ”

“ The genus is widely distributed and extends from shallow water to depths of 1500 fathoms. Caryophyllia sometimes occurs in clusters which have the appearance of an incipient colony. This may be due to the embryos fixing themselves upon the epitheca of existing individuals and developing there. It is doubtful whether the species ever reproduce asexually either by gemmation or by fission. When the zooid is fully expanded it projects some distance above the corallum and shows a very transparent body-wall with a crown of some fifty tentacles. ”

“ If the nervous commissures between the last thoracic and the first abdominal ganglia are cut, or if the thoracic ganglia are destroyed, the crayfish is no longer able to control the movements of the abdomen. If the forepart of the body is irritated, for example, the animal makes no effort to escape by swimming backwards. Nevertheless, the abdomen is not paralysed, for, if it be irritated, it will flap vigorously. ”

“ Accepting it for the moment, it is obvious that the crayfish is unquestionably an animal,—as much an animal as the vole, the perch, and the pond-snail, which inhabit the same waters. Moreover, the crayfish has, in common with these animals, not merely the motor and digestive powers characteristic of animality, but they all, like it, possess a complete alimentary canal; special {229} apparatus for the circulation and the aëration of the blood; a nervous system with sense-organs; muscles and motor mechanisms; reproductive organs. ”

“ Having got thus far, the crayfish rests for a while, and then the agitation of the limbs and body recommences. The carapace is forced upwards and forwards by the protrusion of the body, and remains attached only in the region of the mouth. The head is next drawn backwards, while the eyes and its other appendages are extracted from their old investment. Next the legs are pulled out, either one at a time, or those of one, or both, sides together. Sometimes a limb gives way and is left behind in its sheath. ”

“ The muscles that agitate the skin of the sides should be particularly well developed through frequent practice with water and flies during the warmer part of the year.
At the mouth of Little River, on August 30, I heard one of the Caribou in a large band “blow its nose,” so to speak, with vigor. The sound suggested that produced by a horse in vibrating its nostrils by forcefully expelling air through them. I suspect that the Caribou uses the same means, in an effort to fend off a nostril fly (Cephenemyia) bent on depositing its larvae. ”

“ They appear to reach maturity, so far as the power of reproduction is concerned, in their fifth or, more usually, their sixth year. However, I have seen a female, with eggs attached under the abdomen, only two inches long, and therefore, probably, in her second year. The males are commonly larger than females of the same age.
The hard skeleton of a crayfish, once formed, is incapable of being stretched, nor can it increase by interstitial addition to its substance, as the bone of one of the higher animals grows. ”

“ I imagine that it is sound when there is question of privy conspiracy, rebellion, battle, murder, and sudden death. The original Carey, the Fenian, would hardly have kept the arms buried as long as he did if he had been given to whisky. Men babble in their cups. However, the Careys are no business of mine, neither the bygone generations of them nor the present Peter and Affie. ”

“ The special cautery which was used for ‘aegilops’ (fistula lachrymalis) was probably an olivary pointed cautery, as the cautery recommended by both Scultetus and Paré for this is an olivary pointed one. Paul (VI. xxii) says, ‘Some after excision of the flesh use a perforator, and make a passage for the fluid or matter to the nose, but we are content with [Pg 118] burning alone, using the cauteries for fistula lachrymalis (αἰγιλωπικοῖς καυτηρίοις) and burning down till a lamina of bone exfoliates.’
Gamma-shaped Cautery. ”

“ Every one who has eaten a boiled crayfish, or a lobster, knows that the great shield, or carapace, is very easily separated from the thorax and abdomen, the head and the limbs which belong to that region coming away with the carapace. ”

“ The story of the grain cast into the breast of a poor man has come down to us in confusion: it is not clear why the chariot is introduced at all. Probably we have a conflation of two incidents. In the one (which is the version followed by LA, for which see § 26 of that document) Ciaran gave to a pauper a chariot and horses which the prince Oengus son of Cremthann had given him: as that prince belongs to the boyhood stories, it is probable that this incident should be transferred to that [page 143] section of the Life. ”

“ Every movement of the body, or of any organ of the body, is an effect of one and the same cause, namely, muscular contraction. Whether the crayfish swims or walks, or moves its antennæ, or seizes its prey, the immediate cause of the movements of the parts which bring about, or constitute, these bodily motions is to be sought in a change which takes place in the flesh, or muscle, which is attached to them. ”

“ The hindmost two pairs of thoracic appendages are ambulatory limbs, like the foregoing, but not chelate. Time abdominal appendages are small swimmerets, except the sixth pair, which are very large, and have the exopodite divided by a transverse joint.
All the crayfishes have a complex gastric armature. The seven anterior thoracic limbs are provided with podobranchiæ, but the first of these is always more or less completely reduced to an epipodite. More or fewer arthrobranchiæ always exist. ”

“ Crayfishes, like all the Crustacea, bleed very freely when wounded; and if one of the large joints of a leg is cut through, or if the animal’s body is injured, it is very likely to die rapidly from the ensuing hæmorrhage. A crayfish thus wounded, however, commonly throws off the limb at the next articulation, where the cavity of the limb is less patent, and its sides more readily fall together; and, as we have seen, the pincers are usually cast off at their narrowest point. ”

“ It is probable that the crayfish possesses something analogous to taste, and a very likely seat for the organ of this function is in the upper lip and the metastoma; but if the organ exists it possesses no structural peculiarities by which it can be identified. ”

“ Skeleton of Calyx and Arm.—In living Crinoidea, with the doubtful exceptions of Holopus and Hyocrinus, the calyx is supposed to be built up originally of four whorls of plates, viz. "infra-basals," "basals," "radials," and "orals," the last named forming the skeleton of the oral valves round the mouth. In the two exceptions named there is no certain evidence of the existence of infra-basals. In living forms the infra-basals coalesce with the uppermost joint of the stem ”

“ They serve as conduits by which the spermatic matter of the male is conveyed from the openings of the ducts of the testes to its destination.
If we confine our attention to the third, fourth, and fifth metameres of the abdomen of the crayfish, it is obvious that the several somites and their appendages, and the various regions or parts into which they are {148} divisible, correspond with one another, not only in form, but in their relations to the general plan of the whole abdomen. ”

“ But it is not only in this way that crayfishes part with their limbs. At all times, if the animal is held by one of its pincers, so that it cannot get away, it is apt to solve the difficulty by casting off {38} the limb, which remains in the hand of the captor, while the crayfish escapes. This voluntary amputation is always effected at the same place; namely, where the limb is slenderest, just beyond the articulation which unites the basal joint with the next. The other limbs also readily part at the joints; and it is very common to meet with crayfish which have undergone such mutilation. ”

“ The carapace widens, the fore part of the head is modified so as to bring about the formation of the characteristic metope: and the abdomen, losing more or fewer of its posterior appendages, takes up its final position under the thorax.
In the Zoæa state, those thoracic limbs which give rise to the maxillipedes are provided with well-developed exopodites, and in the free Mysis state all these limbs have exopodites. In the Opossum-shrimps these persist throughout life; in Penæus, the rudiments of them only remain; in the lobster, they disappear altogether. ”

“ We shall see, by-and-by, that there are some exotic crayfish which habitually live on land, and perish if they are long submerged in water.
With respect to the internal structure of the crayfish, there are some points which cannot escape notice, however rough the process of examination may be.
FIG. 5.—Astacus fluviatilis.—A male specimen, with the roof of the carapace and the terga of the abdominal somites removed to show the viscera (nat. size) :—aa, antennary artery; ag, anterior gastric muscles; amm, adductor muscles of the mandibles; cs, cardiac portion of the stomach; gg, green glands ”

“ FIG. 59.—Astacus fluviatilis.—Ventral (A, B, C, F) and lateral (D, E) views of the embryo in successive stages of development (after Rathke, × 15) . A is a little more advanced than the embryo represented in fig. 58, F: D, E, and F are views of the young crayfish when nearly ready to be hatched: in E, the carapace is removed, and the limbs and abdomen are spread out. 1–14, the cephalic and thoracic appendages; ab, abdomen; br, branchiæ; c, carapace; ep, epipodite of the first maxillipede; gg, green gland; h, heart; lb, labrum; lr, liver; m, mandibular muscles. ”

“ The question remains, has the muscle actually been formed out of nucleated cells? Has the ambulatory limb ever possessed an exopodite, and lost it? {205}
The answer to these questions is to be sought in the facts of individual and ancestral development.
An animal not only is, but becomes; the crayfish is the product of an egg, in which not a single structure visible in the adult animal exists: in that egg the different tissues and organs make their appearance by a gradual process of evolution ”

“ In some cases, when a local Caribou is being dressed, a part of the stomach is utilized as a receptacle into which the blood is dipped from the body cavity with the hands, in Eskimo style. The blood goes into the making of soup. ”

“ They leaped out of the bottomless hole, chariot and all; and there they were, tossing their black manes, flourishing their black tails, and curvetting with every one of their hoofs off the ground at once, close by the spot where Proserpina stood. In the chariot sat the figure of a man, richly dressed, with a crown on his head, all flaming with diamonds. ”