they having been formerly brought into Europe by the Dutch, who used 

 to state that they were brought from Ceylon, where only they were to 

 be found. Father Martini, in his Chinese Atlas, relates, on the autho- 

 rity of several Chinese, that similar crabs are found in a lake in China, 

 and that they possess the wonderful property of changing into stone, im- 

 mediately on their being taken out of the water. 



These fossils are however, in fact, found, according to Bourguet, in 

 different parts of the sea-coast of China, in the island of Hainan, and on 

 the coasts of Japan and of Coromandel. They are generally very 

 much mutilated ; but their crust bears oftentimes more the appearance ' 

 of that of a crab recently taken from the sea, than those of Shepey. 



Plate XVII. Fig. 10, represents part of the claw of a crab, in its ma- 

 trix, from St. Peter's Mountain, Maestricht. It is observed, by Faujas 

 St. Fond, that there is no fossil, in this and the neighbouring mountains, 

 more frequent than claws of crabs; but it is an extremely remarkable 

 circumstance, that, notwithstanding the abundance in which these re- 

 mains are here found, no remains of the body, or of the other parts of the 

 animal, are discovered. After long reflecting on this circumstance, this 

 industrious inquirer thought it right to conclude, that these remains had 

 belonged to some crab of the parasitic kind, as Cancer bernhardus, Linn, 

 The softness and delicacy of every other part of its covering, except that 

 of its claws, would, he thinks, satisfactorily explain why these alone have 

 been thus preserved. 



In confirmation of this opinion Latreille, a naturalist who has paid 

 particular attention to the examination of Crustacea, concludes, from the 

 curvature, direction, and general form of the arm of the crab, figured in 

 Faujas's work, and from the absence of any other part of the animal, that 

 it must have belonged to an hermit crab, Pagurus bernhardus. In both, 

 he observes, the right arm is the strongest, and the form of the hand is 

 the same ; the only difference between them being a larger number of 

 asperities on the finger of the fossil crab, which is* also rather longer 



