290 SPIDERS AND PIRATE-CRABS. 



and Acrosoma, are numerous. There is one very large 

 and handsome species of the latter genus, which has 

 a strange habit, when alarmed, of suddenly erecting 

 the second pair of legs, with a rapid, jerking motion ; 

 while, at the same time, he gathers together all the other 

 legs, and shakes his web violently, in order, apparently, to 

 intimidate his adversary, or, perhaps, to ascertain the 

 strength of his position. If, however, the cause of alarm 

 be continued, he coils himself up, while all his members 

 become rigid, as in death, and then falling to the ground 

 he remains like a small, inanimate, brown ball, until the 

 enemy has departed. His cunning never forsakes him, 

 even in his greatest emergency, for he continues all this 

 while actually to maintain a communication between him- 

 self and his web, by means of a fine thread, fixed at one 

 end to the centre of his toil, and at the other attached to 

 the spinneret at the end of his abdomen. By means of 

 this attenuated and invisible cord, he will climb up again 

 when the danger is over, and resume his old pastime of 

 rapine and blood-sucking. 



The dry rocks swarm with Robber- Crabs, in their bor- 

 rowed houses, all very busy and vivacious. These Paguri, 

 or " Pirate Crabs," are very numerous throughout the 

 Indian Islands, taking refuge, some in the prostrate 

 bodies of decayed trees, some in the dead leaves and 

 underwood, and some penetrating the verge of the forest, 

 and ascending the Hibiscus, and other trees that border 

 upon the sea. Many, again, are littoral in their habits? 

 and others live at great depths. One species was obtained 

 off the Cape, at 230 fathoms, having fabricated for itself 

 a most ingenious dwelling, in the form of a univalve 



