26 A HLSTOEY OF BE CENT CKUSTACEA 



' This navigator having landed on the Isle of Crabs in 

 America, he was there immediately surromided by these 

 animals ; although he was armed, although he made a 

 stout resistance, he had to succumb. These monstrous 

 crustaceans, the largest known in the world, cut in pieces 

 with their claws his legs, his arms, and his head, and 

 gnawed his carcase to the very bones.' ^ There are some 

 elements of truth in this blood-curdling story. It is true 

 that Drake died in the West Indies. It is true that he 

 landed on Crab Island. It is true that he met with huge 

 crabs. But he died on board his own ship of a sickness 

 brought on by disappointment, and his body wrapped in 

 a leaden shroud was buried in the sea. The Crab Island 

 on which he once lauded w^as in the Eastern not the 

 Western Main, nor did he lose his life upon it. The land- 

 ing was in the course of his successful voyage round the 

 world, and it was not the crabs that ate Drake, but Drake 

 and his people that ate the crabs, of which a single one, 

 they afterwards said, was sufficient to make a meal for four 

 men. That might well be, if the crabs at all resembled 

 the giant crab of Australia, Pseudocarci/ms gigas (Lamarck),^ 

 in which the carapace is said to be sometimes two feet in 

 breadth, and in which one of the claws of the front pair 

 attains a vast bulk. Such crabs as these may be thought 

 to justify a statement in Linschotten's ' Voyage to Goa,' 

 according to which, ' To the South of Goa^ at a place 

 called iSt. Peters Sand, there are Crabs so great and 

 numerous, that Men are forced to keep a good Watch to 

 defend themselves, for if they get one in their Claws it 

 costs him his life.' 



No crustaceans, however, either extinct or extant, can 

 compete in size and power with those fabled by Olaus 

 and De Paw. In the far distant Silurian age the fossil 

 genus Pterygotus among the Merostomata is supposed to 

 afford the largest specimens of the whole crustacean class. 



* Nouvelle Biograplde gencrale, edited by Hoefer, 1. 14, p. 737. 1855. 



^ An author's name appended in parentheses by custom signifies 

 that he is responsible only for the species, and that this no longer 

 stands in the genus to which he had assigned it. 



