A MISNOMER AND A MISAPPREHENSION 135 
Dromia, as restricted by Stimpson, these sulci are ‘not 
approximated, only produced as far as the segment which 
bears the second pair of legs.’ The carapace in this genus 
is subglobose and usually hairy. Fabricius, in describing 
Dromia Rumphii as the type species from the East Indies, 
says that it hides in the sand holding the valve of a shell 
over its body with its hind feet, and so les in wait for 
little fishes. It was called Cancer dormia by Linneeus, 
perhaps in allusion to the widely prevailing idea that it 
is poisonous and narcotic. Herbst, for this reason, im- 
proved the Linnzean name into Cancer dormitutor, meaning 
the crab that sends you to sleep, for he rejected a previous 
improvement of the name into dromiu, on the ground that 
to call it the running crab was to name it quite in contra- 
diction to its habits. In spite of, or in ignorance of, this 
criticism, Fabricius converted the specific name dromia 
into the name of the genus, which holds its ground not- 
withstanding the inappropriateness to a creature of espe- 
cially sluggish habits. 
Dromia vulgaris, Milne-Edwards, is sometimes taken 
in English waters. It is very common in the Adriatic, 
and according to Stalio the ancients were quite mistaken 
in attributing to it a poisonous character. Herbst seems 
to have thought the Dromia Rumphii ‘by the hand of 
nature marked, quoted and signed, to do a deed of shame,’ 
for, after describing its rough, brown, furry coat, its short, 
thick legs, and the last pair armed with sharp-pointed 
claw like a scorpion’s tail, he adds that ‘ everything con- 
tributes to give this crab a repulsive and horrible appear- 
ance, perhaps to scare men from eating it, since it is very 
poisonous.’ He subsequently noticed that when stripped 
of its fur it lost its grimness of aspect. 
The habit of concealment that runs through this 
family is referred to in several of the generic names, as in 
Cryptodromia, Stimpson, 1858, the concealed Dromia, in 
Hypoconcha, Guérin Méneville, 1854, the crab under a 
shell, in Conchecétes, Stimpson, 1858, the shell-dweller. 
Among the Crustacea collected a few years back by 
Surgeon-Major Archer on the sand and mud banks north 
