z, who hold that the crab--a genus comparatively recent in its
appearance in creation--is less embryotic in its character, and higher
in its standing, than the more ancient lobster, my uncle regarded the
lobster as a more highly developed and more intelligent animal than the
crab. The hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two
openings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives to
escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is
usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one
opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant,
as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself
through sheer loss of temper. And yet the crab has, he used to add, some
points of intelligence about him too. When, as sometimes happened, he
got hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of some luckless digit,
my uncle showed me how that, after the first tremendous squeeze, he
began always to experiment upon what he had got, by alternately
slackening and straitening his grasp, as if to ascertain whether it had
life in it, or was merely a piece of dead matter; and that the only way
to escape him, on these trying occasions, was to let the finger lie
passively between his nippers, as if it were a bit of stick or tangle;
when, apparently deeming it such, he would be sure to let it go;
whereas, on the least attempt to withdraw it, he would at once straiten
his gripe, and not again relax it for mayhap half an hour. In dealing
with the lobster, on the other hand, the fisher had to beware that he
did not depend too much on the hold he had got of the creature, if it
was merely a hold of one of the great claws. For a moment it would
remain passive in his grasp; he would then be sensible of a slight
tremor in the captured limb, and mayhap hear a slight crackle; and,
_presto_, the captive would straightway be off like a dart through the
deep-water hole, and only the limb remain in the fisher's hand. My uncle
has, however, told me that lobsters do not always lose their limbs with
the necessary judgment. They throw them off when suddenly frightened,
without first waiting to consider whether the sacrifice of a pair of
legs is the best mode of obviating the danger. On firing a musket
immediately over a lobster just captured, he has seen it throw off both
its great claws in the sudden extremity of its terror, just as a
panic-struck soldier sometimes throws