26 A HISTORY OF RECENT ORUSTACEA 
‘This navigator having landed on the Isle of Crabs in 
America, he was there immediately surrounded 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 
enawed 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 landed was 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, Pseudocarcinus 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 cf Goa, at a place 
called St. Peter’s 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. 
1 Nouvelle Biographie générale, edited by Hoefer, t.14, p. 737. 1855. 
2 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. 
