120 NATURAL HISTORY. 



storks and catfishes- I never saw Cacopus globulosus, a marvellous 

 frog figured by Dr. Gunther, the very representative of Humpty 

 Dumpty among reptiles. 



Natives don't usually pay much attention to frogs, but once when I 

 had a lot of men stung by scorpions, a village elder made cataplasms 

 of live frogs pounded between stones, and applied the quivering and 

 mangled reptiles to the injured parts with great success. I think the 

 very nastiness of the remedy gave the sepoys more faith in it. 



Tigers are said to eat bull-frogs in the rains, and thereafter to 

 sicken and waste away, just as in Ireland a skinny cat is supposed 

 to have been eating crickets. I think myself that the tiger is pro- 

 bably pretty far gone in famine before he takes to catching frogs, 

 and it is pretty certain that all the frogs he could catch in a day 

 would make him but a poor day's ration. 



Of the Crustacea of our fresh waters we know but little, and have 

 no standard books on the subject. Crabs (Telphusida) are found 

 almost to the top of the ghats, and furnish food to man, birds, turtles 

 and fishes. They are said to be unwholesome in the hot weather, 

 which is not borne out by my own experience. And at that season 

 certain forest tribes go and grind stones on each other in dry nullas. 

 They say that the crabs mistake the noise for that of waters. At any 

 rate the crabs do come out, and are caught and eaten. Another plan 

 is to drop a bullet or pebble, attached to a string, into the crab's hole, 

 who thereupon nips it and is drawn out holding on to what he, no 

 doubt, supposes a live intruder. The Mahratta names for them are 

 Kenkad and Muta. The former word, with a dry humour charac- 

 teristic of that nation, is also applied to handcuffs. I have good 

 precedent for introducing these useful articles into my paper, for the 

 United States Commissioners to the Fisheries Exhibition exhibited a 

 pair with a label stating that they were found " very serviceable in the 

 whale fishery ; and carried by most vessels." 



A true prawn is found even above the falls of the Godavery, and 

 small shrimps up to at least 2,500 feet on the ghats. These latter are 

 sufficiently abundant to be dried for sale. A cray fish in the streams 

 of the Satpura is said to reach " a cubit" (hat, 19 inches) in length 

 over all, and fragments that I found bore out the statement. I use 

 the term cray fish here, as it always has been used in English and 

 French (ecrevisse) to mean a crustacean ivith nippers. Some 

 naturalists have attempted to restrict it to those that have none, but 

 the limitation is artificial and cannot succeed. 



