LESSON XXI.
A VERY OLD FAMILY.
“’Twas when the world was in its prime,When the fresh stars had just begunTheir race of glory, and young TimeTold his first birth-days by the sun.”
“’Twas when the world was in its prime,When the fresh stars had just begunTheir race of glory, and young TimeTold his first birth-days by the sun.”
“’Twas when the world was in its prime,When the fresh stars had just begunTheir race of glory, and young TimeTold his first birth-days by the sun.”
“’Twas when the world was in its prime,
When the fresh stars had just begun
Their race of glory, and young Time
Told his first birth-days by the sun.”
—Moore.
ANCIENT ARISTOCRACY.
ANCIENT ARISTOCRACY.
One June morning I was sitting by the ocean. The tide was out and was unusually low, laying bare beds of sand that were seldom uncovered. The stone on which I sat had been dried by breeze and sun, but living barnacles fretted its sides, and wet bladder-weed draped its edges, indicating that usually the waters flowed above it. A little farther out, a multitude of small black sea-snails lay, each with tightlyclosed operculum to retain moisture sufficient until the sea returned; but now and then some few crawled to a more favorable position; and here and there a pale pink foot shod with a little black shoe reached forth, and taking hold upon the sand the creature pulled itself over by a muscular contraction.
Near me on the right the sand disappeared under a bed of dark ooze; for here was the mouth of an inlet, and twice each day the tide hurrying back through its intricacies brought black mud from the marshes to deposit upon the beach. In this layer of pasty soil I presently discovered a track very like what we call “ladder footprints” in fossils. There were numerous holes as if made by some slim, sharp instrument, and on each side a furrow. I rose and traced this track until it disappeared under a fresh deposit of mud.
As I turned seaward again I saw at the edge of the water a dark-brown shining object over a foot in diameter, with rounded front and convex surface, moving laboriously along the slime. After it had travelled some yards from the water to a place where the mud-bank overlaid the sand by two or three feet, the creature came to a pause and presently began to disappear. The large, rounded shield entered plow-like into the mud-bank, sank lower and lower, and then the triangular hinder shield vanished, and finally the long spiked tail. This animal was a limulus, or horseshoe crab, and he was now plowing his way about in the mud, seeking for his dinner.
The previous day the tide had been very high, and I knew that in the high tides of June the female limulus comes up to lay her eggs on the margin of the sand. I furtherreflected that numerous boulders and small sharp rocks were strewn along this coast, and that the high tide had been accompanied by a violent wind. From these facts I concluded that I might find a dead limulus among the rubbish at high-water mark. At the summit of the beach was a long swath of sea-weed, empty and broken shells, bits of wood, and the flotsam that is cast up by the sea.
All this débris was dry atop, but thoroughly wet a few inches below the surface, and there “beach fleas” were hopping actively, and scallop shells lay tightly closed, and certain hapless crustaceans were on their backs entangled.
Being sorry for these poor creatures, likely to die long before the lagging tide returned for them, I spent some minutes in flinging back into the water the scallops and crabs which had been cast out. As I pursued these benevolent labors, I saw in the wreck heap, the long, spiked, serrated tail indicating a limulus, or horseshoe, or king crab. Removing the rubbish I disentombed a limulus, full twenty inches across the widest part of the shield, and that shield so hard and thick and dark, that it resembled a piece of sheet iron rather than a portion of an animal. But hard as it was, some wave flinging it upon a sharp rock had wrought its destruction, and a large break on one side told how Madame Limulus had perished.
The animal was remarkably heavy, but dragging it to my rock, I made it the theme of my meditation.
What ancient family of humans in all this world, Mistress Limulus, but is modern as the last new fashion, compared withyour hoary antiquity of lineage? Mongol or Hindoo, Russian or Saracen, Emperor of Austria or King of Italy, who of them can count grandfathers with you? Compared to you all Adam’s line are but of yesterday. If you had been a reasoning being, and capable of handing down traditions, all the lore of all the ages might now be hidden under that vast head-shield.
Limulus, or horseshoe crab, or king crab, whichever you prefer to be called, do you know that the last age of your race has come, and you are bearing down on extinction? The seas of China and Japan, and this ancient eastern coast of North America, still cherish you and your relatives; but the hapless fortunes of the times, the elements, and man the pitiless, have doomed you, and soon the day will come when not a limulus of you all will survive, except in the cases of museums. The doom of your old-time, far-off cousins, the trilobites, is upon you. Let me trace you back to your origin; for the rocks, more faithful than your dull and imperfect brain-cell, hold your history.
Very modestly, as if hesitating whether you would be entertained in the world’s great hostelry, one small and insignificant species of your race arrived in the Upper Silurian age. You found the seas warm, the sunshine tempered by vapors, the stone lilies white as that then unknown thing, snow; the coral polyps like rainbows shimmered in the waters. You ate, swam, and were happy. You throve; you lived unobserved through Devonian days, and, ah, what vast mud beds, black with the decay of moss and ferns, awaited you in the Coal period! Seven species more came into your enlargingrace, but you were humble still, and remained small and unobtrusive, lest some vast reptile should end your family line in his capacious maw.
One of your species, however, seized with ambition, developed beyond all the rest, and here in America grew into the size and shape you wear to-day. Fortune favored the bold, and the enterprising Yankee limulus stands at the head of your tribes until now. Back there in the Coal period your family were most of them weak, and wore the form not of adult king crabs, but of larvæ, with all the segments of the hinder shield free of each other; and that brave tail was but a rudimentary thorn. Perhaps this very humility, intense as that of Uriah Heep, has engineered you through the convulsions of the ages, to be the fellow citizens, and alas! the victims of the human race.
But now the anatomy rather than the history of my limulus attracts me. One of the ringed creatures you are, O crab, but your first ring has become enormously developed into the vast head shield with rounded front and beautifully bevelled edge, sweeping back into sharp and spiny corners, which, dragging upon the sand or mud, make the furrow on each side of your footprints. Here is this hinder shield, a rude triangle with the apex cut out to admit the insertion of the great tail; and this triangular shield is also made of rings, but they have grown together into one single piece. Still we can count them from the free, horny points.
This sword-formed tail, my limulus, did not belong to you when, first free of the egg-case, you sported in the water. It appeared only at your second moult. In this you werelike your progenitors of the Coal period, who wore no tails; tails being then, no doubt, the royal insignia of the reigning line of reptiles, upon which meaner animals might not venture.
Your eyes are fitted into your head shield, and so are well protected. Let me turn you over and look at your feet. This great head shield it appears, houses not only your eyes, but all your walking and eating apparatus, which seem to be closely connected. When you were in the larval state you could double under the rings of your hinder shield, which then were not soldered together, so that you were neatly encased, and how safe you were!
Your legs are wondrous small for your size, and, O singular creature, you use not only your legs, but your hands and your antennæ and your maxillars for walking. And what is this? At the base of them all you have jaws. So away you travel on your numerous limbs, and whichever lucky member finds a morsel of food, behold a pair of jaws right at its base to devour it! Therefore are you rightly named a “mouth-footed” creature. There are certain mollusks with heads, which also have their heads and mouths and stomach in their feet. We hope, meeting them in the ocean, you do not hold yourself superior to them, for they are of lineage yet more ancient than your own.
Yesterday, Madame Limulus, you met your death as you came up the beach heavily laden with eggs, which you intended to deposit in the sand. If I state that a million of eggs now lie under your enormous shield, I do not think I shall over-estimate the number. You meant, as for manyyears past you have done twice each year, to come near high-water mark and place your eggs in the sand, where twice daily, as the tide was low, the heat of the sun would strike the eggs and warm them into life.
What was your own infant experience, my limulus? Fifty days, or seventy days, perhaps more,[49]you lay hidden in the egg, because all those changes which other crustaceans undergo after hatching, the royal limulus completes in the privacy of its elastic case. Change, change, still change, within the curtains of the cradle, and at last, out comes the living limulus, tailless, large-eyed, its hinder segments free of each other. Spiny, tiny, pale brown, glossy, a shell finer than a human baby’s most delicate finger nail, able to swim, to find your own food, to double up and protect yourself, such you were, O limulus, on coming out of the egg.
You needed no parent to guard you, or forage for you; the sun had warmed you into life, and the ocean was your food-bringing mother. Child of the sun and sea! Such the ancients fabled Venus, the queen of beauty, and you, O my limulus, are one of the most uncomely of living things. When first you found your egg-case cleft away, and came out upon the wave, six pairs of feet were ready for your walking, swimming, and food-grasping apparatus. So well endowed with members for use, and with no brain capable of large ambitions, content with to-day, and ignorant that there was ever a yesterday, or that there will be a to-morrow, you,no more than a child of the house of Hapsburg, expected beauty to be united to the splendor of—
A Very Ancient Line.
FOOTNOTES:[49]Dr. Lockwood kept some king-crab eggs in a dark place, three hundred and sixty days before they hatched.
[49]Dr. Lockwood kept some king-crab eggs in a dark place, three hundred and sixty days before they hatched.
[49]Dr. Lockwood kept some king-crab eggs in a dark place, three hundred and sixty days before they hatched.