4 HISTORY OF BRITISH CRUSTACEA. 



monstrated on the subject, seemed to think this but a rea- 

 sonable and just retaliation, a sort of payment in kind ; re- 

 plying with a grin and chuckle of triumph, ' Crab eat black 

 man ; black man eat he !' w * 



Some of us have witnessed the moulting of a Crab, and 

 mysterious does it seem to the novice in Natural History 

 when he finds that a hard Lobster or Crab, with a coat of 

 stony hardness, and which requires great strength of arm and 

 knife, and even of hammer, sometimes, to open and cut or 

 break it, casts off its old covering entire — the joint of every 

 part of its thousand-jointed body, antennas, foot-jaws, claws, 

 and tail. And not only does it cast off these hard external 

 parts, but the very linings of its gills, of its stomach, of its 

 eyes and of other parts are thrown off, and thus, when the 

 creature has escaped, the shell seems as perfect nearly as the 

 animal itself. We often see cases from the Brazils of a gaudy 

 Grapsus, more delicate even than the new-coated animal; — 

 seeing the parts are translucent ; and the cases are only the 

 cast-off skins, rejected by what naturalists call ecdysis, but 

 our Saxon forefathers would have termed moulting. 



Mr. R. Q. Couch, a most able naturalist, remarked at the 

 anniversary meeting of the Cornwall Natural History and 

 * Gosse's Aquarium, p. 198. 



