FIDDLER CRAB. A small crab of the ge nus LTea (or Gelasimus) enormously abundant on muddy shores along the eastern coast' of the United States south of Cape Cod. "The males have one claw very largely developed; the other chela is small. The former is likened to a fiddle. the latter to a bow, and this, together with the waving motion of the large claw, gives them their popular name. . . . The female has claws of small and equal size.'' The largest, commonest, and most Mland-ranging species mime;,, easily distinguished by having a patch of rill at the joints of the legs. tter, extending its range around the Gulf of M•xieo and throughout the West Indies, is rea pagnax. A third species ( Leo pugilator) is more marine, inhabiting sand bars and beaches. All are gregarious, congre gating in the salt marshes in countless numbers and making burrows in the mud. just above the line of high tide. These holes are from half an
inch to two inches in dhimeter. They (wimpy them as refuges, and rea minas forms of pellets of mud an arched penthouse over its bole, in which it sits and watches what goes on. All the species wander about a good deal, and when alarmed scuttle sidewise with comical speed into the first. burrow they come to. They are vege tarians, feeding on minute alga-. etc., which they scrape up and put into the month with the smaller claws. The burrowing of this crab often does serious injury to embankments, particularly the levees near the mouth of the Mississippi. Consult: Verrill, Inrertrbra les of l'inemzrd Sound (Washington, 1874), reprinted in /oode.
Industries, Section I. (Washington, 1884) : and Arnold, The Sea Beach of EbleTifle (New York, 1901). See CRAB, and Plate of 'CRABS.