582 TIiAXSACTIO^'s of the American Institute. 



EXTRAORDINART CRAB. 



Em. Blanchard, in a paper read before the French Academy of 

 Sciences, states that the Garden of Plants has just obtained pos- 

 session of a gigantic crab, which is probably the largest ever 

 known. That circumstance, however, he does not consider suffi- 

 cient to warrant the conclusion that it belongs to a distinct species. 

 Warm-blooded animals, such as mammalia and birds, cease to 

 grow after they have attained a given age; so do those insects 

 whose life is very short; but most animals belonging to other 

 groups differ from the former in that respect. Eeptiles, fish, 

 Crustacea and mollusks, though arrived at an adult age, continue 

 to grow, though very slowly, indeed, but still to such a degree 

 that certain individuals will, under favorable circumstances, attain 

 a prodigious size if they live to an extremely advanced age. Old 

 writers have mentioned fish, such as pike, sturgeon, &c., of such 

 large dimensions as we have never witnessed in these species. 

 Making the necessary allowances for occasional exaggerations, it 

 is, nevertheless, an undeniable fact that in certain rivers, where 

 fishing was not carried on to any great extent, old fish were occa- 

 sionally caught of extraordinary size. Among Crustacea, there 

 are several instances. For many years past two American lobster* 

 have been kept at the Garden of Plants, where they attracted 

 attention by their enormous dimensions, and yet they proved to 

 be of the same kind as the moderately sized one now met with in 

 the same waters. The crab now at the museum was brought from 

 Japan by Sleboldt. It belongs to the Inachus genus, generally 

 represented by a very small species, and seems to be exceedingly 

 old. Each of the front legs of this specimen measures one metre 

 and twenty centimetres (four feet one inch). If the two front 

 legs be stretched out in a line, the whole length from end to end 

 is 2.60 metres (eight and a half feet). It has been asserted that 

 in some individuals this length has been found to attain eleven 

 feet, but no specimen of the kind has ever been seen in Europe. 

 The same phenomenon of extraordinary growth has been observed 

 in mollusks, especially in the muscle of the Mytilidae family, found 

 on the coast of Russian America, where, being rarely disturbed, 

 it seems to increase in size indefinitely. 



TELLURIUM. 

 Dr. L. Feuchtwanger exhibited a large specimen of tellurium, 

 extracted from gold quartz of California. 



