Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1900-06-01
TALK ABOUT CRABS.
They Have a Longer Pedigree Than
Any Other Creature.
Once They Used to Eat Everything
That Came Within Reach OF
. Their Claws, Now They Are
Hunted to he Eaten.
Especial Washington letter.

eeW1sssH4 - A IS ons goes Of t the ti ass
honored sayings of the
people of this section. The belief pre-
walls that ''only in those months in
which the letter sR' is found should
oysters be eaten" Consequently the
oyster season every year begins with
September and ends with April. How
ever, at the seaside resorts oysters are
served at the hotels during the summer
months, but they are taken directly
from the salt water to the table.
With the departure of the oysters we
are accustomed to having crabs and
CLANS. Little Aeck CLAIMS are at the
top of the bill of fare in all first-class
hotels. We. have clam chowder, and
clam broth, and clam patties, hashed
clans and stewed clans, and clans in
al styles. To most people they are
palatable, and also almost indigestible;
that is, to most people in cities. But
by the jewellers along the seashore,
who take a great deal of physical ex-
ercise, they are regarded as an almost
indispensable article of summer diet,
and nobody complains that they are in
digestible.
But all of our people eat crabs, the
soft shell variety being exceptionally
popular. They furnish food to suit the
palate of the most fastidious of cpl
cures, and they are SO delicate that
! digestion is a part of the pleasure of
| their consumption. They ere usually
served broiled, on toast. The hard
shell crabs are usually boiled, picked,
minced and served as deviled crabs.
The crabs caught and utilized to-day
| are comparatively small, very few of
| them being more than six inches in
| length. If you get one foot long it
| is giant. And yet, in comparatively
| modern times, about 100000 years
ago, they used to attain great size. In
those days frogs used to be six feet
| long, bigger than most men, andthey
thought nothing of hopping two or
three blocks at a single leap.
| Calcareous mud covered the entire
| continent of North America, once upon
a time; say about 100000 years ago.
| This mud was at the bottom of the
| sea, and when the mountain ranges
| of the east and west were Mechanically
upheaved the muddy sea bottom be-
came dry land. There is an average of
$4,000 feet of thickness of the sea bot
| tom deposits on this continent. The
| 4OWSSt anu OlOcSO lay was kl1S Cdl-
careous mud, in which certain animals
were embedded as the hardening proc
ess went on. Consequently the scien-
lists of to-day find those animals her
metically esealed in the rocky layer
which was once muddy sea bottom.
In the Smithsonian institution there
are many specimens of these ancestors
of the crabs and lobsters of to-day.
They have turned to stone, with We
mud, but they have been perfectly pre-
served, even to the facets of their eyes
The professors who study these mat
tiers say that with just little bit al
calculation they can tell how old these
specimens are and they talk of a hun
dred thousand centuries just as moth
ers talk of the ages of their babies.
They say that the very learned Hish-
op Pontoppidan was the first to de-
scribe the crab as 80 red fish which
walks backwards" when, as . matter