158 A HISTORY OF RECENT CRUSTACEA 
down a nut, descends to strip it of its husk, and then ‘ re- 
ascends the tree, if the situation is favourable, and holding 
the nut by a bit of the fibre, which it leaves on for the 
purpose, it lets it fall upon a rock, or stone, and thus 
breaks it.’ I could wish that he had spoken of having 
seen this wonderful manceuvring with his own eyes. Dr. 
T. H. Streets declares that ‘the wonderful stories about 
these crabs climbing the trees after cocoa-nuts are purely 
fictitious.’ 
Rumphius is the original authority for the statement 
that these crustaceans in their night ramblings ascend the 
cocoa-nut palms and appropriate the nuts. It is to their 
love of that food that they owe the title of the robber-crab. 
It is said that they can be lured out of their holes by pre- 
senting to them a cocoa-nut attached to the end of a stick. 
Rumphius says that this crab in the language of Amboina 
is named Catattut and Atattut, but that it is familiarly 
called by his own countrymen ‘ Don Diego in ’t volle har- 
nasch,’ its Latin name being Cancer crumenatus, of which 
the Belgic equivalent is Beurs-Krabbe. This title of purse- 
crab alludes to the packet of fat under the tail, which is 
accounted a delicious marrow-like morsel by those who 
like it. The oil from it is, or once was, regarded as a 
panacea for sprains and centusions. Herbst declares that 
the claws of the Birgus are so strong that they easily crack 
a cocoa-nut which a human being could not break open 
with a stone. He says, moreover, that if they have once 
seized hold of an object, it is easier to break the claws than 
to make them let go. Yet what cannot be done by force 
may be achieved by cunning, for if, he says, you just tickle 
the creature under the tail, it becomes so irritated that it 
gives itself a nip on the tail, and dies by its own claw! 
Herbst wrongly figures the fourth pair of legs as simple, 
whereas they are, in fact, chelate. The naturalists of the 
Challenger were informed by an intelligent native at Sam- 
boangan that the female crab carries about large masses of 
the eggs with it in the month of May, and retains them so 
attached until the young are developed just like the parent. 
At Samboangan it is called ‘ Tatos, and appreciated es 
