A LOBSTER AT DINNER.

Evening Star, Issue 3575, 7 August 1874, Page 3

A LOBSTER AT DINNER.

(By F. Buckland in ‘ Land and Water.’) A lobster is a particular fellow in his food. I have been watching one in my large marine aquarium, at Reculvers. If a portion of food be thrown to him, he immediately sets his long horns at work to ascertain the whereabouts of his dinner. If he does not like it, he at once pushes it away from him with the attitude of an epicure who bids the water take away a plate of meat he does not fancy. If the food is agreeable to him, he munches it up, moving his jaws in a peculiar way, like a weaver making a blanket. He tears his food into large pieces, leaving the actual pounding work to be done by the very peculiar internal teeth, which are found in the lining of the stomach, and which my reader can easily examine for himself if he will take the trouble. Wken the lobster goes out for a “ constitutional,” and is not in a particular hurry, he carries his great claws in front of him, well away from the ground, like the big flags we sometimes see heading street processions. He walks upon his little legs which are underneath his body, while he keeps his horns moving in front of his nose like a blind man tapping the flags with his stick as he plods along, led by his dog ; hence I conclude the lobster is short-sighted. If the least thing alarms him, he scuttles backwards on his little legs, which he moves with the rapidity of the legs of a centipede. If he does not go fast enough iu this way, he suddenly snaps his tail towards him, like a man suddenly closing his hand and flies backward with a jerk like an incliarubber band snapped in two. He always goes into his cave tail foremost, and he takes the most wonderfully good shots at the entrance. It has been said by a friend of mine that a fly fisherman will never be perfect until he has got an eye at the back of his head, so as to prevent his drop fly getting hitched up in the tree behind him. I really think the lobster must have an eye in his tail somewhere. Our pet lobster is not willing that the secrets of her toilet should be exposed to vulgar gaze, so the first night she was in the tank she artfully collected cockle and oyster shells and made a trench round herself after the fashion of the Romans when they took possession of a hill-top. A branch of seaweed forms a canopy over her head, and there she is at this minute in a house of her own making, a regular “ compound householder,” with no taxes to pay.

A Montreal paper, speaking of a recent dualin says, in a most pathetic style, that the bodies of the victims were spread over many rods, “ here a piece and there a piece.” A young lady of Cincinnati, who dotes on Dumas, is anxious to get married and go abroad, as she says she can’t be romantic in her native city during the pig-sticking season. A citizen of Chicago tells us that he recently travelled 2.000 miles in Ohio, and that everybody he met called potato “ tater,” except one young lady who called it “pertater.” “ You musicians ought to be happy fellows,” —, the other day, to a bandmaster. Why ? said the leader, “ Because you need never want for money; for when your funds run short, you have only to put your instrument to your lips and—raise the wind.