As soon as she has finished laying her eggs, Mother Turtle carefully scrapes this dirt back over them and tamps it down, much as a foundryman tamps the sand in a mould. You can guess what she uses for a tamper--the under side of her shell, raising and lowering herself on her legs like a Boy Scout taking his morning setting-up exercises in a Summer camp. After that she doesn't pay any more attention to her eggs. She leaves the sun to do her hatching for her. Both land and sea turtles--or, more properly speaking, the tortoises and the turtles--hatch their young in this way. The sea-turtles scramble up out of the water on their flippers, much as a seal does in climbing on a rock, and make their way back from the shore, great crowds of them, at nesting-time, to some stretch of sand, and there lay their eggs. This march of the mother turtles always takes place at night. When the young are hatched they dig their way up through the sand and make for the sea. II. THE CRAB FAMILY Another one of the water people who help make land and one that everybody knows, is the crayfish. Every small boy is afraid Mr. Crayfish will catch his little big toe sooner or later, when he goes swimming; although I never heard of a crayfish that did. But they never worry about _their_ toes--the crayfish don't. When they lose a whole foot even--as they often do--it grows right out again. The science people say this is because they belong to a low order in the animal world, but I think it would come in right handy for any of us--this way of regrowing not toe-nails alone, but toes and all--don't you? The crayfish, as you may know, love to burrow in the mud, for you are always coming across their little mud towers along the margins of the brooks. Related to the crayfish are the crabs. Mother Nature seems to have been very fond of crabs--she has made them after so many different patterns and scattered them all over the world; in the deep sea, along the shallows of its shores, and on land. Those you are most apt to meet must have more or less business on land, for the shape of their legs shows that they are formed for walking rather than swimming. But go far out to sea and you'll find crabs with paddles on all four pairs of legs, like banks of oars; while others, living on the borders of the sea, have paddles only on the last pair. [Illustration: SOUTH SEA ISLAND AND COCOANUT COLUMBUS