The individual having selected his place, becomes perfectly quiescent, and no change is observed, during some hours, but a sort of swelling along the edges of the great upper shell at its back part. After a time, this posterior edge of the shell becomes fairly disengaged, like the lid of a chest, and now the more difficult work of withdrawing the great claws from their cases, which every one recollects to be vastly larger at their extremities and between the joints than the joints themselves. A still greater apparent difficulty presents in the shedding of the sort of tendon which is placed within the muscles. Nevertheless, the Author of nature has adapted them to the accomplishment of all this. The disproportionate sized claws undergo a peculiar softening, which enables the crab, by a very steadily continued, scarcely perceptible effort, to pull them out of their shells, and the business is completed by the separation of the complex parts about the mouth and eyes. The crab now slips out from the slough, settling near it on the sand. It is now covered by a soft, perfectly flexible skin; and, though possessing precisely the same form as before, seems incapable of the slightest exertion. Notwithstanding that such is its condition, while you are gazing on this helpless creature, it is sinking in the fine loose sand, and in a short time is covered up sufficiently to escape the observation of careless or inexperienced observers. Neither can one say how this is effected, although it occurs under their immediate observation; the motions employed to produce the displacement of the sand are too slight to be appreciated, though it is most probably owing to a gradual lateral motion of the body, by which the sand is displaced in the centre beneath, and thus gradually forced up at the sides until it falls over and covers the crab. Examine him within twelve hours, and you will find the skin becoming about as hard as fine writing-paper, producing a similar crackling if compressed; twelve hours later, the shell is sufficiently stiffened to require some slight force to bend it, and the crab is said to be in _buckram_, as in the first stage it was in _paper_. It is still helpless, and offers no resistance; but, at the end of thirty-six hours, it shows that its natural instincts are in action, and, by the time forty-eight hours have elapsed, the crab is restored to the exercise of all his functions. I have stated the above as the periods in which the stages of the moult are accomplished, but I have often observed that the rapidity of this process is very much dependent upon the temperature, and especially upon sunshine. A cold, cloudy, raw, and disagreeable spell happening at this period, though by no means common, will retard the operation considerably, protracting the period of helplessness. This is the harvest season of the white fisherman and of the poor slave. The laziest of the former are now in full activity,