28 
of interrogation. Herbst’s figure is not one of the best, but 
can hardly refer to any species but the present. Rumph’s 
Plate 9 in his Amboinsche Rariteitkamer, 1705, is an effective 
representation. Its name of Rotskrabbe or rock-crab is 
explained as indicating its likeness to a piece of coral rock. 
The name Cancer spinosus was used very indefinitely by 
Rumphius, the present being avowedly the fourth of four 
very distinct forms to which he applied it. Leach in the 
Zoological Miscellany, Vol. II., Pl. 98, p. 107 (1815), gives a 
striking coloured figure, but the colouring was probably only 
from a dried specimen. He describes it as “ Horrid Par- 
thenope; shell with the tubercles eaten-impressed; legs 
spiny, hands and wrists verrucated, abdomen and _ breast 
carious. Inhabits the Asiatic Ocean.” There is a certain 
uncouth ruggedness about this rendering of the latin original, 
which tallies very well with the unconventional appearance 
of the crab. The animal evidently wishes to be regarded as a 
miscellaneous piece of corroded or eroded rock and it is taken 
at its own valuation by the Balani which settle on its humps 
and in its hollows, on its knobs and spines, without distinction 
of limbs and carapace. Good figures will be found also in 
Guérin’s Iconographie, Crustacés, Pl. 7, fig. 1, and in the 
special edition of the Regne Animal, Crustacés, Pl. 26, fig. 2. 
These works are undated, but Guérin’s plate is quoted in 
1834, by Milne-Edwards, who refers to his own volume of that 
date when explaining Plate 26 of the Regne Animal. 
Rumphiuus gives the breadth of the carapace in his specimen 
as four inches, which exactly corresponds with that of the 
specimen submitted to me from the Durban Museum. He 
says that the chelipeds are nine inches long, but neither in 
his figure nor in the specimen from Natal, do they appear to 
be much more than seven and a half inches in actual extent, 
though a length of nine inches may be obtained by measuring 
round the outer margin. The larger cheliped thickens con- 
siderably to the base of the short widely gaping thumb and 
finger. It is on the right in our specimen, as in the figures 
given by Rumphius and Herbst, but on the left in those by 
Leach, Guérin, and Milne-Edwards. The sub-pentagonal form 
of the carapace is obvious in all, and some minor differences 
in the representation of it may be due less to variation in the 
actual specimens than to the disguises caused by extraneous 
animals settled upon it. 
From Parthenope spinosissima, A. Milne-Edwards, this 
species is distinguished by the shape of the carapace, the 
coarseness of the spines, and the smoothness of the fingers. 
