NATURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4146, 4 July 1874, Page 5

NATURE.

A Lobster at Dinner.—A lobster ia a particular fellow in his food. I have been watching one in my large marine aquarium, at Reculvers. If a portion of food be thrown to him, he immediately sets his long horns at work to ascertain the whereabouts of his dinner. If he does not like it, he at once pushes it away from him with the attitude of an epicure who bids the waiter take away a plate of meat he does not fancy. If the food is agreeable to him, he munches it up, moving his jaws in a peculiar way, like a weaver making a blanket. He tears his food into large pieces, leaving the actual pounding work to be done by the very peculiar internal teeth, which are found in the lining of the stomach, and which my reader can easily examine for himself if he will take the trouble. When the lobster goes out for a “ constitutional ” and is not in a particular hurry, he carries his great claws in front of him, well away from the ground, like the big flags we sometimes see heading street processions. He walks upon the little legs which are underneath his body, while he keeps his horns moving in front of his nose like a blind man tapping the flags with his stick as he plods along, led by his dog ; hence I conclude the lobster is shortsighted. If the least thing alarms him he scuttles backward on his little legs, which move with the rapidity of the legs of a centipede. If he does not go fast enough in this way, he suddenly snaps his tail towards him, like a mansuddenly closinghiahand, and flies backward with a jerk like an indiarubber band snapped in half. He always goes into his cave tail foremost, and he takes the most wonderfully good shots at the entrance. It has been said by a friend of mine that a fly fisherman will never be perfect until he has got an eye at the back of his head, so as to prevent his drop fly getting hitched up in the tree behind him. I really think the lobster must have an eye in his tail somewhere. Our pet lobster is not willing that the secrets of her toilet should be exposed to vulgar gaze, so the first night she was in the tank she artfully collected cockle and oyster shells and made a trench round herself after the fashion of the Romans when they took possession of a hill-top. A branch of seaweed forms a canopy over her head, and there she is at this minute in a house of her own making, a regular “ compound householder,” with no taxes to pay.—E. Buckland, in Land and Water