50 CRAB, SHRIMP, AND LOBSTER LORE. 



unfortunate Crabs are very good to eat, and tliey ap- 

 pear tliorouglily aware of it, making use of every effort 

 in their power to avoid capture. They are, neverthe- 

 less, ruthlessly overtaken in the subterranean xace, 

 dragged forth into the broad sunlight, ignominionsly 

 bound with cords twisted from the tough fibre of the 

 cocoa husk (a very requisite precaution by the bye), 

 and lugged off into hopeless captivity. 



Some of these nut-feeders grow to a monstrous size 

 (some being over two feet long), are armed with nippers 

 of most formidable dimensions, and make no more of 

 snapping the strong cord, with which the Crab-catchers 

 endeavour to secure them, than if they were as many 

 strands of packthread. At certain seasons of the 

 year a vegetable diet appears to become unpalatable to 

 our friend. He then seeks a change, and levies open 

 and indiscriminate warfare on all the tribe of shell- 

 bearing molluscs he can lay his thievish claws on, not 

 giving even the ghost of a chance of escape. He 

 seizes them forcibly with his nippers, and then extracts 

 them from their snug shell- castles, with a dexterity 

 which an accomplished London shell- fish dealer might 

 look on with envy ; and then, not content with devour- 

 ing the ill-fated tenant, he performs a sort of grotesque 

 defiant, and triumphal march, with the vacant shell 

 raised like a standard, aloft in his claws, as if for the 

 express purpose of inciting other Crabs more peaceably 



