426 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book IX. 



double, in the male single ; besides which, the animal has two 

 claws with indented pincers. The upper part only of these 

 fore-feet is moveable, the lower being immoveable : the right 

 claw is the largest in them all. 77 Sometimes they assemble 

 together in large bodies ; 78 but as they are unable to cross the 

 mouth of the Euxine, they turn back again and go round by 

 land, and the road by which they travel is to be seen all beaten 

 down with their foot-marks. 



The smallest crab of any is that known as the pinnotheres, 79 

 and hence it is peculiarly exposed to danger ; its shrewdness, 

 however, is evinced by its concealing itself in the shell of the 

 oyster ; and as it grows larger, it removes to those of a larger 

 size. 



Crabs, when alarmed, go backwards as swiftly as when 

 moving forwards. They fight with one another like rams, 

 butting at each other with their horns. They have 80 a mode of 

 curing themselves of the bites of serpents. It is said, 81 that 



from the female, except in the opercule. There seems, in reality, to be 

 no foundation for the statement here made by Pliny. 



77 Both in the crab and the cray-fish, Aristotle says. 



78 JElian, Hist. Anim. B. vii. c. 24, calls this kind of crab po/uc, 

 the " runner," from the great distance it is known to travel. He says, 

 that they meet together, coming in one by one, at a certain bay in the 

 Thracian Bosporus, where those who have arrived wait for the others ; and 

 that on finding that the waves of the Euxine are sufficiently violent to 

 sweep them away, they unite in a dense body, and then waiting till the 

 waters have retired, make a passage across the straits. 



79 Cuvier remarks, that Hardouin is correct in considering this the same 

 as the crab known in France as Bernard the Hermit (our hermit-crab), the 

 Cancer Bernardus of Linnaeus, a species of the genus now known as the 

 Pagur. This animal hides its tail and lower extremities in the empty shells 

 of whelks, or other univalves. Cuvier suggests that our author committed 

 a slip of the pen, in using the word oyster here for shell-fish. This is the 

 tcapKiviov, probably, of Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 15, and De Part. 

 Anim. B. iv. c. 8 ; and it is most probable that, as Cuvier states, the real 

 Trivvorrjpric of Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. iv. c. 4, and B. v. c. 14, was 

 another of the Crustacea, of which Pliny speaks under the same name in 

 c. 66. This last is a small crab, that lives in the shells of bivalves, such 

 as mussels, &c., but not when empty. See the Notes to c. 66. 



80 This circumstance is more fully treated of in B. xxxii. c. 19. 



81 Our author speaks rather more guardedly here than usual ; and Har- 

 douin seems almost inclined to believe the story. Ovid also alludes to this 

 story in the Met. B. xv. 1. 370, et seq. " If you take off the bending claws 

 from the crab of the sea-shore, and bury the rest in the earth, a scorpion 

 will come forth from the part so buried, and will threaten with its crooked 

 tail." 



