The hard skeleton of a crayfish, once formed, is incapable of being stretched, nor can it increase by interstitial addition to its substance, as the bone of one of the higher animals grows. Hence it follows, that the enlargement of the body, which actually takes place, involves the shedding and reproduction of its investment. This might be effected by insensible degrees, and in different parts of the body at different times, as we shed our hair; but, as a matter of fact, it occurs periodically and universally, somewhat as the feathers of birds are moulted. The whole of the old coat of the body is thrown off at once, and suddenly; and the new coat, which has, in the meanwhile, been formed beneath the old one, remains soft for a time, and allows of a rapid increase in the dimensions of the body before it {33} hardens. This sort of moulting is what is technically termed _ecdysis_, or _exuviation_. It is commonly spoken of as the “shedding of the skin,” and there is no harm in using this phrase, if we recollect that the shed coat is not the skin, in the proper sense of the word, but only what is termed a _cuticular layer_, which is secreted upon the outer surface of the true integument. The cuticular skeleton of the crayfish, in fact, is not even so much a part of the skin as the cast of a snake, or as our own nails. For these are composed of coherent, formed parts of the epidermis; while the hard investment of the crayfish contains no such formed parts, and is developed on the outside of those structures which answer to the constituents of the epidermis in the higher animals. Thus the crayfish grows, as it were, by starts; its dimensions remaining stationary in the intervals of its moults, and then rapidly increasing for a few days, while the new exoskeleton is in the course of formation. The ecdysis of the crayfish was first thoroughly studied a century and a half ago, by one of the most accurate observers who ever lived, the famous Réaumur, and the following account of this very curious process is given nearly in his words.[2] [2] See Réaumur’s two Memoirs, “Sur les diverses reproductions qui se font dans les écrevisses, les omars, les crabes, etc.,” “Histoire de l’Académie royale des Sciences,” année 1712; and “Additions aux observations sur la mue des écrevisses données dans les Mémoires de 1712.” Ibid. 1718.