REMARKABLE BEHAVIOUR 81 



was tlie case at St. Croix, but since the cutting down of 

 the forests and destruction of thousands of the crabs, their 

 number has diminished. They generally take up their 

 abode on the hills, not less than one mile nor more than 

 three miles from the coast. It is in the morning and 

 evening that they are to be found in greatest numbers 

 under the trees. Go away then without a stick in hand, 

 and they v/ill approach with uplifted claws as if threatening 

 an assault. But if they are themselves assailed with a 

 stick or a switch, they retreat, yet still facing the foe, and 

 ever and anon clashing their claws together to strike terror 

 into him. Thus they withdraw to their holes in the rock 

 or the rotten tree or deep burrows in the ground. They are 

 capital eating, and are one of the principal food resources of 

 the natives, who improve the flavour by fattening them up 

 for three or four days in a potato field. But a warning is 

 given that they do not always suit the stomach of Euro- 

 peans, since they are apt to produce cold hypochondriac 

 humours, whereby some explain the slow melancholy nature 

 of the Caribbee islanders. When seized by a leg or a claw 

 these crabs relinquish it so readily as to produce the im- 

 pression that their limbs are only stuck on. The lost 

 appendage would be renewed at the next change of skin, 

 but it often happens that the sacrifice which has saved the 

 crab from its human foes exposes it as a defenceless victim 

 to those of its own race. 



The pairing season is said to be in March and April. 

 In May, the rainy period, they march in great hosts towards 

 the sea, to bathe and lay their eggs in it. ' Then all roads 

 and brooks are filled with them, and it is indeed a very 

 wonderful instinct, which the Creator has given them, to go 

 direct to that part of the island where there are stretches of 

 sand and slopes from which they can most easily arrive at 

 the sea. Nothing can hinder them from going the straight 

 road towards the sea, for they go over everything that 

 comes in their way, be it hedges, houses, churches, hills or 

 cliffs, straight over everything they go, and rather clamber 

 up at the peril of their lives, than make a circuit. In the 

 night, for example, tliey will creep in at a window, and 



