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The similarity of motion in Families is another subject well worth the consideration of the naturalist: the soaring of the Birds of Prey, the heavy flapping of the wings in the Gallinaceous Birds, the floating of the Swallows, with their short cuts and angular turns, the hopping of the Sparrows, the deliberate walk of the Hens and the strut of the Cocks, the waddle of the Ducks and Geese, the slow, heavy creeping of the Land-Turtle, the graceful flight of the Sea-Turtle under the water, the leaping and swimming of the Frog, the swift run of the Lizard, like a flash of green or red light in the sunshine, the lateral undulation of the Serpent, the dart of the Pickerel, the leap of the Trout, the rush of the Hawk-Moth through the air, the fluttering flight of the Butterfly, the quivering poise of the Humming-Bird, the arrow-like shooting of the Squid through the water, the slow crawling of the Snail on the land, the sideway movement of the Sand-Crab, the backward walk of the Crawfish, the almost imperceptible gliding of the Sea-Anemone over the rock, the graceful, rapid motion of the Pleurobrachia, with its endless change of curve and spiral.
It certainly does, but it has the virtue of being unexaggerated, and why shrink from the telling of the plain truth? An unwitnessed tragedy may be told in a very few words. About twenty-five feet above high-water mark was the shaft of a white sand-crab. The site was not common, for the crabs are in the habit of burrowing well within the range of the tide.
But as I was bending the feet of a large Sand-Crab to and fro in various directions, in order to see in what movements of the animal friction occurred at the place indicated, and whether these might, perhaps, be movements of particular importance to it and such as would frequently recur, I noticed, when I had stretched the feet widely apart, in the hollow between them a round orifice of considerable size, through which air could easily be blown into the branchial cavity, and a fine rod might even be introduced into it.
And the stone was good to look at. Sometimes it shook, and then it became so bright that the eyes were dazzled. The star-like stone had been on the rock for all time, protected by distance and mystery. Was it not, indeed, the eye of the "debil-debil" who had custody of the lightning and thunder imps, and could it not be elevated or depressed like the eye of a sand-crab?
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