Crawfish

“ Thus by the close of the session the student has something far more than a mere first-hand knowledge of the anatomy of the crawfish—though that in itself were much. He has an insight also into a half-dozen allied subjects. He has learned to look on the crawfish as a link in a living chain—a creature with physiological, psychological, ontological affinities that give it a human interest not hitherto suspected by the novitiate. ”

“ You hold the crawfish firmly in one hand, and with the other make magnetic strokes from the end of the animal toward the head. If, in the mean while, when making these passes in the given direction, and carefully avoiding any other movement, the tips of the fingers are placed at the animal's back, it forms an arch as the hand is withdrawn. Under this manipulation the crawfish, in a short time, becomes quiet, places itself on its head in a vertical position, using its feelers and the two claws, which are pushed inward, as a support. ”

“ In the fresh-water section, huge tanks, with water flowing in rapidly from great faucets, hold carp, eels, and other fish, all alive; but the greater number of tanks are filled with scrambling hundreds of crawfish, the much prized French 'écrevisse,' which, with the langoustes, reach the high-water mark for shell-fish prices in the restaurants—but they are worth it. The écrevisse is no better than our Oregon crawfish, but the latter are being rapidly exterminated, whereas in France the delicious creatures are properly protected. ”

“ The water has an assistant in its cruel inroads, and the peace of mind of the property-holders along the lower Mississippi is constantly disturbed by the presence of a burrowing pest which lives in the artificial dikes, and is always working for their destruction. This little animal is the crawfish (Astacus Mississippiensis) of the western states, and bores its way both vertically and laterally into the levees. This species of crawfish builds a habitation nearly a foot in height on the surface of the ground, to which it retreats, at times, during high water. ”

“ He must not only be up in time to eat his breakfast, but he must get it himself. "Help" is very scarce in Crawfish land. Everybody helps himself to everything he can lay his claws on, whether others have been helped or not. "Finders are keepers," says Mr. Crawfish.
In looking over Mr. Crawfish's seven-jointed legs, we found that some of these legs had shrivelled up into little hairs, fringing his tail and other parts of his body. These hairs are really fingers to him— like those big, long feelers in front; for he feels things with them. ”

“ Crawfish are found in rough and rocky places, lobsters in smooth places, and neither crawfish nor lobsters are found in muddy ones; and this accounts for the fact that lobsters are found in the Hellespont and on the coast of Thasos, and crawfish in the neighbourhood of Sigeum and Mount Athos. Fishermen, accordingly, when they want to catch these various creatures out at sea, take bearings on the beach and elsewhere that tell them where the ground at the bottom is stony and where soft with slime. In winter and spring these animals keep in near to land, in summer they keep in deep water ”

“ Crawfish seems to be a little careless about the way in which he carries his heart. You see, he has it away up on his back, between his shoulder blades, as it were. But, then, in changing and shifting parts in animals, Mother Nature seems to be a good deal as your mama is with the Spring house cleaning; she can't get everything into the right place at once. But Mr. Crawfish has made the four hearts that he had when he was an angle worm into one heart, and that's a very great improvement.
Now here is a curious thing; the earthworm has four hearts, the crawfish has only one. You have only one ”

“ The body in general and the region of the thorax in particular are smooth, not rough as in the crawfish; but on the large claws the outer portion has larger spines. There is no apparent difference between the male and female, for they both have one claw, whichever it may be, larger than the other, and neither male nor female is ever found with both claws of the same size.
All crustaceans take in water close by the mouth. The crab discharges it, closing up, as it does so, a small portion of the same, and the crawfish discharges it by way of the gills ”

“ They are omnivorous; that is to say, they live on stones, slime, sea-weed, and excrement-as for instance the rock-crab-and are also carnivorous. The crawfish or spiny-lobster can get the better of fishes even of the larger species, though in some of them it occasionally finds more than its match. Thus, this animal is so overmastered and cowed by the octopus that it dies of terror if it become aware of an octopus in the same net with itself. The crawfish can master the conger-eel, for owing to the rough spines of the crawfish the eel cannot slip away and elude its hold. ”

“ Crawfish than Mr. Fly, doesn't come next to him in the procession. Doesn't it look as if Nature "skipped a note" when she made him?Not only in the forms of things, but in the stuff they are made of, Nature does skip. She puts lime in the shells of the crawfish and the oyster, but leaves it out of the shells of insects, which come between them. Not all insects have shells, as you know, but such of them as have shells for their backs, or shell-like scales for wings, do not have any lime in them. ”

“ As we imagined the earthworm to put on armor and become a crawfish, because we could see the earthworm so plainly inside the armor, now let us imagine the crawfish going into an oyster shell to improve his insides. He takes off his many-jointed legs and eating clippers, takes off his stalked eyes, his long finger-like feelers, shrinks into his shell, makes his shell still harder, so that it will not be easy for enemies to get in and disturb him. ”

“ In this experiment the crawfish is held by a string, and that striking condition of immobility, which lasts some time and then disappears, is just as apparent in it as in the others.
I will place a loose string around the tail of this crawfish, without moving the animal, draw the ends lightly together, and hang the crawfish by means of it on this frame. You see how the animal, with its head downward, in vain strives to free itself from its unnatural position. ”

“ Many are said to much exceed two feet from the tail to the tip of the claws and horns. They are of an iron-black color, and have formidable pincers with serrated edges and tip-points inwardly converging, which cannot crush like the weapons of a lobster, but which will cut the flesh and make a small ugly wound. At first sight one not familiar with the crawfish of these regions can hardly believe he is not viewing some variety of gigantic lobster instead of the common fresh-water crawfish of the east coast. ”

“ Among the Yeddavanad, of the Congo, a mother tells her children concerning three kinds of crabs: "Eat kallali, and you will become a clever man; eat hullali, and you will become as brave as a tiger; eat mandalli, and you will become master of the house" (449. 297) .
In the Chippeway tale of the "Raccoon and the Crawfish," after the former, by pretending to be dead, has first attracted to him and then eaten all the crawfish, we are told:—
"While he was engaged with the broken limbs, a little female crawfish, carrying her infant sister on her back, came up seeking her relations. ”

“ But crawfish, which crawl briskly in their course backward, often remain for some time motionless, a result which is caused .by no visible circumstance. We thus learn that normal, unmolested crawfish can become motionless, just as well as the ones we experiment with, only the mysterious character of these experiments does not lose all its interest, for we see that the immobility which we occasion by our preparation cannot be prevented, while the crawfish which is not subjected to our manipulations becomes motionless through no demonstrable or extraordinary circumstance. ”

“ In the crawfish the male differs from the female: in the female the first foot is bifurcate, in the male it is undivided; the belly-fins in the female are large and overlapping on the neck, while in the male they are smaller and do not overlap; and, further, on the last feet of the male there are spur-like projections, large and sharp, which projections in the female are small and smooth. Both male and female have two antennae in front of the eyes, large and rough, and other antennae underneath, small and smooth. ”

“ The Crayfish or Crawfish (Fr.: Écrevisse) , or river lobster, is a long-tailed, ten-footed crustacean resembling the lobster, and similar to it in its habits. It was considered a delicacy by the Greeks and Romans, and was eaten by them seasoned with pepper and other condiments. Crayfish are best preserved alive by keeping them in baskets with fresh grass or plants such as the nettle, or in a vessel containing only a slight depth of water. As the crayfish requires a quantity of air, the water should be frequently renewed.
141.—EEL BROTH. (Fr.—Bouillon d'Anguille.) ”

“ The male crawfish picks up the fertilized eggs with his feelers, that are arranged in a double row underneath his tail, and, by means of these feelers, he carries the eggs close to{105} his body until they are nearly ready to hatch. The frogs and toads show great tenderness for their eggs. ”

“ Nets for taking crawfish are only ten feet long, with a width of six feet, the mesh being three quarters of an inch wide. These nets are made by the women always, it being deemed beneath the dignity of aboriginal manhood to make nets to catch such insignificant game as crawfish. ”

“ Either the crawfish is in a normal and wakeful condition, and does not move because it has no motive for doing so, and consequently does not wish to move, or else it cannot move because it is exhausted, or finds itself in a state of lethargy and sleep. In regard to our experimental animals there is no doubt, as already stated, that they are placed in positions in which they would move if they could, that is, if they were in a condition capable of working their nervous system. ”

“ For myse'f, I can't say I deems none high of crawfish as viands, but raccoons is different; an' the way they looks at it, crawfish is pie.
"This Olson brings out his two crawfish an' fetchin' a jar of water from the spring, he drops in a crawfish an' incites an' aggravates Zekiel—that's the name of Bill's raccoon—to feel in an' get him a whole lot.
"Zekiel ain't none shy on the play. He knows crawfish like a gambler does a red chip; so turnin' his eyes up to the sky, like a raccoon does who's wropped in pleasant anticipations that a-way, he plunges in his paw an' gets it. ”

“ The ball player rubs himself with an eel skin to make himself slippery and hard to hold, and, according to the Wahnenauhi manuscript, women formerly tied up their hair with the dried skin of an eel to make it grow long. A large red crawfish called tsiska′gĭlĭ, much resembling a lobster, is used to scratch young children in order to give them a strong grip, each hand of the child being lightly scratched once with the pincer of the living animal. ”

“ Crawfish, like the rest of us, is more modest and, in other ways more polite, when he is good-natured. He doesn't feel so boastful as he does when he is in a fighting mood."Well, you might swim better, dear Mr. ”

“ The sea-urchin has an apparatus known as Aristotle's lantern providing five strong teeth worked by powerful muscles with which it catches live worms and crabs. The sea-crawfishes, built like lobsters except for the absence of the large pincers, most perfectly convey the impression of life on the bottom of the sea. ”

“ But before entering upon the subject of craw-fish, I may say that the mohoe bark, from its fine quality, and the abundance in which it may be procured, might be made exceedingly useful for the manufacture of paper—an article now becoming scarce and dear.
The cray or craw-fish resemble the lobster, but are smaller in size, and want the two great claws. Their flesh has more flavor than that of either the crab or lobster, and we found them an acceptable addition to our commissariat. ”

“ CHAPTER III. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CRAY­FISH—THE MECH­A­NISM BY WHICH THE LIV­ING OR­GAN­ISM AD­JUSTS IT­SELF TO SUR­ROUND­ING CON­DI­TIONS AND RE­PRO­DUCES IT­SELF. If the hand is brought near a vigorous crayfish, free to move in a large vessel of water, it will generally give a vigorous flap with its tail, and dart backwards out of reach; but if a piece of meat is gently lowered into the vessel, the crayfish will sooner or later approach and devour it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The zoæa stage of the crab, a minute transparent creature, which undergoes several changes, swims about flapping its long jointed abdomen, like some of the Entomostraca, and the shrimp in particular. The larva of crayfish, the so-called glass-crab, is very peculiar and interesting. The sessile-eyed series, in which the compound eyes are never mounted on a movable stalk, and to which the Isopoda belong, exhibits great diversity of structure as well as of habits and habitat. Some live in fresh water, most are marine, while others live on land and take to a parasitic life. ”