Read Ebook: Nature readers by Wright Julia McNair

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Ebook has 895 lines and 20312 words, and 18 pages

Then he goes with his wife to look for food.

They keep near their home.

They eat flies, gnats, ants, lady-birds, and other little insects.

They also eat sea-weed.

When beach-flies light on the sand or on sea-weed, the crabs jump at them, and catch them as cats catch mice.

But the cats do not move so quickly as the crabs.

Mr. and Mrs. Crab put the bugs they catch into their pantry.

For six hours, while the tide is high, they stay in their house; and while they stay in the house they eat insects and sea-weed they have stored away.

The crab acts as though he knew about the tide.

He knows when it will be high over his house.

He knows when it will be low, so that he can come out.

MORE ABOUT MR. CRAB.

I could, for a year, tell you queer things about Mr. Crab.

Where are your bones?

They are inside your body.

Your bones are a frame to hold up your soft flesh.

Mr. Crab's bones are on the outside of his body.

His bones are his armor, to keep him from being hurt.

The crab can live and breathe either in water or on land.

You can live only on land.

He can both walk and swim.

Mrs. Crab lays eggs.

A hen, you know, lays eggs, one by one, in a nest.

She keeps them warm till the chicks come out.

The crab's eggs are put in a long tube or sack.

Mrs. Crab does not leave them in a nest.

She carries them tied on her legs, or under her body.

When the small crabs come out of the eggs, they grow very fast.

When you catch a crab by his arm or leg, if you do not let go, he drops off this arm or leg, and runs.

He will first pinch you, if he can, with his big claw.

Could you run with one leg gone?

The crab has legs to spare.

Then, too, his legs will grow again.

Yours would not.

A crab's leg, or hand, will grow again very soon, when one has been lost.

But if his eye-peg is cut off, it takes a whole year for a new eye to grow.

I think he knows that; he is very careful of his eyes.

The eye-pegs of one kind of crab are very long.

He has a wide, flat shell.

There is a notch in each side of his shell.

He can let his eyes lie in that notch.

How can he do that? His eye-pegs are so long he can bend them down flat to the shell and keep them safe in the notch.

FOOTNOTES:

MR. AND MRS. CRAB GET A NEW COAT.

Your skin is soft and fine.

As you grow more and more, your skin does not break.

Your skin gets larger as your body grows.

But Mr. Crab is in a hard shell.

The shell will not stretch.

It gets too tight, and what can Mr. Crab do then?

What do you do when your coat is too small?

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