, tc NATURAL HISTORY. 



14b 



contradicts many of the wonderful details given in most books concerning 

 it He says : " It has a habit of climbing the cocoanut palms, but whether 

 to take the air or for temporary lodging is doubtful; it does not rob the 

 trees, however, as has been charged against it, since it feeds only on fruits 

 that have fallen. One of its pincer-claws is developed into an organ of 

 extraordinary power, capable, when the creature is enraged, of breaking 

 a cocoanut-shell, or a man's limb. The inner edges of the claw are armed 

 with a series of white enamelled denticulations whose resemblance to 

 teeth is singularly close, even to the irregular scarlet line below them, 

 which might pass for gums. The Birgus feeds on the nuts almost exclu- 

 sive v. using its great claw to denude the fruit of the husk surrounding it, 

 and to get at the eye of the nut, which it has learned is the only easy 

 gateway to the interior. 



" Of the three eye-spots seen at the end of a cocoanut, only one permits 

 an easy entrance. The Birgus does not waste its energies in denuding the 

 whole nut, and it never denudes the wrong end. Having pierced the proper 

 eye with one of its spindle ambulatory legs, it rotates the nut round it 

 until the orifice is large enough to permit the insertion of its great claw to 

 break up the shell and triturate the contents, whose particles it thus car- 

 ries to its mouth by means of its other and smaller cheliferous foot. 



" From this nutritious diet it accumulates beneath its tail a store of 

 fat which dissolves by heat into a rich, yellow oil, of which a large speci- 

 men will often yield as much as two pints. Thickened in the sun, it forms 

 an excellent substitute for butter in all its uses. I discovered it to be a 

 valuable preserving lubricant for guns and steel instruments. And only 

 when a small bottle of it which I had had for two years was finished, did 

 I fully realize what a precious anti-corrosive in these humid regions I had 

 lost ." 



There is one feature, however, which is even more strange than any of 

 the tales — true or fictitious — told of the habits of the palm-crab, and 

 which, farther, is an undoubted fact. The palm-crab spends all its time 

 on the land, and this habit has developed new structures, unknown in any 

 other crustacean. It has the normal crustacean gills, but besides these 

 organs of respiration there is developed a peculiar organ richly supplied 

 with blood-vessels, and which acts exactly like a lung. 



All of the forms of decapods, so far mentioned, have a large abdomen, 

 sometimes exceeding the rest of the body in size ; in all those to follow — 

 the true crabs — the abdomen is much smaller, and folds away on the under 

 -ide of the body, so that one, at first sight, does not recognize its presence- 

 In their development but few of the decapods have a nauplius stage, but 

 most of them pass through another type of development with its peculiar 



