THE SOLDIER CRAB. 45 



specimens, and some of a large Trochus {Meleagris 

 picus), with pearly interior, as well as a capacious 

 Ampullaria, inhabited by the same species. It 

 crawls irregularly, but quickly ; making its shell 

 rattle against the pebbles as it proceeds ; but if 

 alarmed, it instantly withdraws into its house, and 

 bringing its strong legs around its head in the form 

 of a semicircle, claps its greater claw upon the whole, 

 presenting, as I have said above, nothing but a hard, 

 shelly, prickly, convex surface within the margin of 

 the house, so accurately filling the aperture, and so 

 strongly held down, that it is impossible to extract 

 the animal alive without breaking the shell to frag- 

 ments. Yet the wary Soldier is ready for fight; 

 while I was holding one in my hand, the rogue pro- 

 truded his claw, and seizing the skin of my palm, 

 fairly took the piece out. 



The species was the well-known Coenohita Dioge^ 

 nes, and, as I afterwards found, abundantly common 

 in the woods near the coast. I even found it nume- 

 rous, inhabiting the shell of the same large Helixy 

 far up on the side of the mountains, behind Blue- 

 fields, in the dryest and most rocky situations. Sir 

 H. de la Beche found it inhabiting sea-shells, near 

 the Rio Minho, ten miles from the sea. It is evident 

 that the active little creatures must have crawled 

 this whole distance, and as the Helix is found in a, 

 living state only in the woods, and, as far as I know, 

 only in the mountains, it follows that the Soldiers 

 must have travelled up the country in their sea-side 

 shells, until they came to the region of the Helixy 

 and there have changed their houses, and brought 



