NONSUCH 



rocks are confined to the narrow insular borders of 

 the tropics, while our Planes, whose home is infi- 

 nitely less enduring than sand, live abundantly 

 from Nova Scotia to the Straits of Magellan, and 

 from California to New Zealand. It is one of the 

 most successful crabs in the world, and, like the 

 hoatzin of neotropical river banks, as long as 

 its unique haunts continue, its race is safe from 

 extinction. 



Nevertheless, when fate drives Planes and his 

 particular bit of material cosmos ashore on Non- 

 such, then nemesis closes down. No prayers to great 

 Cancer high overhead in the heavens will avail. Day 

 by day as the foliage blackens, his livery of mottled 

 gold becomes more conspicuous ; as the fronds dry, 

 his gills ache for the flowing salt, and sooner or later 

 on his trips into the water and back he is seen by 

 hostile bird or crab or fish, or, stricken by the alien 

 air and sand, he sinks down, slain by the inconceiv- 

 ably slight chance of having been cast upon the only 

 bit of dry land in all the expanse of millions of miles 

 of kindly, weed-strewn ocean. 



As I write, sitting in my laboratory nearly one 

 hundred feet above the sea on my little outlying 

 Bermuda Island of Nonsuch, a land crab has 

 climbed the rough wall and is clinging half-way to 

 the ceiling. At odd moments I have tried to fathom 

 this unreasonable exhibition of Excelsiorism, but 

 have failed utterly. 



The most reasonable explanation is that it cor- 

 responds to a dog turning around several times 



196 



