CRUSTACEA. 



81 



it unsafe to ride over many parts of the mountain. From 

 his own observation, and from the concurrent testimony of 

 the natives, he is of opinion that these Crabs do not migrate. 

 Another Indian species is thus noticed in the Journal of 

 Bishop Heber. " All the grass through the Deccan usually 

 swarms with a small Land-crab, which burrows in the ground, 

 and runs with considerable swiftness, even when encumbered 

 with a bundle of food almost as big as itself; this food is 

 grass, or the green stalks of rice, and it is amusing to see the 

 Crabs sitting, as it were, upright,- to cut their hay with their 

 sharp pincers, then waddling off with their sheaf to their holes 

 as quickly as their sidelong pace will carry them." The 

 Land-crabs of the Antilles* have long been celebrated for 

 their nocturnal and burrowing habits, and for the determina- 

 tion evinced, by some species, to take the most direct line to 

 the coast, when the period of visiting the sea, for the purpose 

 of depositing their eggs, has arrived. 



Classification. Among the numerous tribes of Crustacea, 

 it is to be expected that 

 at considerable difference 

 must exist as to the nature / 

 of their food, and a corres- 

 ponding difference in the 

 form of their mouths, and* . 

 the structure of those organs 

 by which the food is taken. 

 Some are furnished with 

 jaws or mandibles suited 

 for mastication ; others with 

 a beak or tubular apparatus 

 adapted for suction. This 

 enables us at once to sepa- 

 rate the class into two great 

 divisions, the masticating 

 and the suctorial. There is, 

 however, a tropical genus, 

 the Limulus or King-crab 

 (Fig. 56), whose mouth 

 has no peculiar appendages, 

 but is surrounded' by legs, m g . 56.-LiMt5i.us 



Gregurciniens. Milne Edwards' Crustaccs, vol. ii. page 18. 



