SHELL FISH AND CONGER HUNTING, ETC. 331 



cut made by a steel weapon. Place a little poison on the crab's 

 tail, and the weapon is still more effectual. Tasmania, also, 

 rejoices in some remarkable crabs, the claws of which are so 

 large, travellers say, that they can take hold of the thigh of 

 a man. 



Some crabs are all body ; others are all legs to wit, the 

 spider crab, which is sometimes captured on English coasts. 

 Everyone, from the reader of boys' books to the student of 

 Mr. Rider Haggard's romances, has heard of land crabs of 

 various kinds, some of which will dispose of a corpse or a 

 cocoanut with equal facility, and, though they live on shore, 

 occasionally take a saltwater bath. 



The Cocoanut Crab, having no rocks to lie under, makes a 

 burrow for himself like a rabbit among the roots of huge tropical 

 trees. He tears off the husk from the eyed end of the nut, 

 and then hammers with one of his heavy claws at one of the 

 eyes until it caves in. He then inserts a hind leg conveniently 

 furnished with nippers through the hole and helps himself to 

 the contents. Moreover, being a practical creature, he rends 

 the cocoanut fibre and makes a pleasant couch with it at the 

 end of one of his subterranean galleries. When not eating 

 nuts he turns his attention to shell fish, and then is very often 

 caught and eaten himself. 



The Land Crabs of the West India Islands, on the other 

 hand, prefer the uplands, only coming down to the sea coast 

 in the spawning season. When they are on the march both 

 negroes and white men feast grandly ; on their way back again, 

 though so many of them as are left they are unmolested, fcr 

 they now appear spent, keltish sort of things with no good in 

 them. 



But enough of these foreigners ; let us come to our own 

 good, honest, dusky red fellows who live in submarine rocky 

 strongholds all round our coasts, and while affording us dainty 



