274 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



enemy, seizing him with one of their long claws, and then 

 shaking off the limb at its junction with the body. As the 

 claw retains its tension for some little time after this voluntary 

 separation, the effect is the same as if the creature were still 

 actively biting, and while the enemy's attention is engaged 

 with these troublesome pincers, the crab takes the opportunity 

 to conceal itself in some crevice. As is the case with all 

 crustaceans, a new limb soon sprouts out and repairs the loss 

 of the discarded member. 



A singular species of land decapod, called the Fighting 

 Crab from its bellicose propensities, possesses one large and 

 one very little claw, which gives it a very strange- and ridicu- 

 lous appearance, particularly when, running along at full speed, 

 it holds the large claw in the air, and nods it continually, as 

 beckoning to its pursuer. 



The molluscs are no less profusely scattered over the tropical 

 seas and coasts than the higher organised crustaceans. There 

 we find those mighty cephalopods, whose long fleshy processes, 

 as thick as a man's thigh, are able, it is said, to seiz6 the 

 fisherman in his boait and drag him into the sea ; and there is 

 the abode of the tridacna, whose colossal valves, measuring five 

 feet across, attain a weight of five hundred pounds, and serve 

 both as receptacles for holy water in Catholic churches and to 

 collect the rain in the South Sea Islands. 



The rarest and most beautiful of shells, the royal Spondylus, 

 the Carinaria vitrea, tlie Scalaria pretiosa, the Cyprsea aurora, 

 and a host of Volutes, Harps, Marginelles, Cones, &c., of the 

 most exquisite colouring, are all inhabitants of the warmer 

 waters ; and the most costly gift of tlie sea, the oriental pearl, 

 is the produce of a mollusc which is found scattered over many 

 parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 



On descending still lower in the scale of marine life, we find 

 the jelly-fish disporting in the tropical waves in hosts ; s 

 brilliant as the skies. Some are formed like a mushroom, 

 others assume the shape of a belt or girdle ; others are globular, 

 while some are circular, flat, or bell-shaped ; and others again 

 resemble a bunch of berries. In colour, perhaps the most 

 delicate is the lovely Yelella, with its pellucid crest, its green 

 transparent body and fringe of purple tentacles ; but it is 

 surpassed in size and gorgeousness by the Physalia, or 



