252 THE INHABITANTS OF TIE SEA, 
coasts of Syria and Barhary, and abounds at Cape de Verde, 
owes his name to his swiftness, which is such that even a man 
on horseback is said not to be able to 
overtake him. The West Indian ocy- 
podas dig holes three or four feet deép, 
immediately above high-water mark, 
and leave them after dusk. Towards 
the end of October they retire further 
American Sand-Crab. inland, and bury themselves for the 
winter in similar holes, the opening of 
which they carefully conceal. 
In the Portuni, or true Sea-crabs, finally, we find the hind 
pair of legs flattened like fins, so that they would cut but a 
sorry figure on the land, but are all the 
better able to row about in their congenial 
element. 
A strange peculiarity of many crabs is 
the quantity of parasites they carry along 
with them on their backs. Many marine 
productions, both of a vegetable and 
animal nature, have their birth and grow 
to beauty on the shell of the sea-spider. Corallines, sponges, 
zoophytes, algze, may thus be found, and balani occasionally cover 
the entire upper surface of the body of the crab. “AIL the 
examples of the Inachus Dorsettensis which I have taken,” says 
the distinguished naturalist, Mr. W. Thompson of Belfast, “‘ were 
invested with sponge, which generally covers over the body, 
arms, and legs; aigre and zoophytes likewise spring from it.” In 
this extraneous matter some of the smaller zouphytes find 
shelte1, and, together with the other objects, render the capture 
of the Inachus Dorsettensis interesting far beyond its own acquisi- 
tion. In Mr. Hyndman’s collection, there is a sea-spider carry- 
ing on its back an oyster much larger than itself, and covered ~ 
besides with numerous barnacles. Like Atlas, the poor creature. 
groaned under a world. 
The extraneous matters which so many crabs carry along with 
them are, however, far from being always a useless burden ; 
they are often a warlike stratagem, under cover of which the 
sly crustacean entraps many a choice morsel. Thus Bennett 
witnessed at Otaheite the proceedings of an interesting Hyas 
Spotted Fin-Crab. 
