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LIST OF ENTOMOLOGICAL WORKS. 



science. We have, perhaps, ourselves been somewhat to 

 blame in not allowing it a more prominent place in our pages 

 than we have hitherto done. We now announce our intention 

 of repairing this error ; and, aided by the valuable contri- 

 butions of Mr. Thompson, we hope that no future number 

 will appear without, at least, one article on Crustacea. The 

 singular and varied economy of these creatures, their gigantic 

 size, and the value of many species as articles of food and 

 commerce, surely might weigh with the Entomologist, even 

 though he held it of no importance that without them his 

 cabinet must be incomplete. Of the Hermit, or Soldier-crabs, 

 we have already spoken in our opening article. Mr. Kirby's 

 work contains a still moi - e complete and interesting account of 

 them ; but after the quotation from Mr. Bennett's " Wan- 

 derings," we must not transcribe it. Our author mentions a 

 huge lobster, which ascends the cocoa and palm trees by night, 

 devouring their fruit, of which it is so fond, that in confinement 

 it will subsist on it for months, without suffering from want of 

 water. One kind of land-crab is distinguished by the extra- 

 ordinary disproportion of its claws ; one of them, sometimes 

 the left, sometimes the right, being enormously large, while 

 the other is very small, and often concealed, so that the 

 animal appears single-handed. These crabs " have the habit 

 of holding up the great claw, as if beckoning to some one." 

 Another species of land-crab runs so fast that it is difficult to 

 overtake it on foot. A third species requires a fleet horse to 

 run it down. Bosc relates, that he found these in Carolina, 

 where he experienced great difficulty in riding them down and 

 shooting them with a pistol. There is a story, delightfully 

 told, in a little book lately published, which, being founded on 

 fact, gives some idea of the size, strength, and activity of a 

 land-crab. Jt happened that, in one of the insurrections of 

 the blacks in the West Indies, a corporal of marines was 

 murdered, the head being separated completely from the body. 

 At night, the body and head were buried by his comrades 

 in a grave, which it may be supposed was not very deep. 

 The next day a kind of skeleton-looking object was seen 

 sporting about with the corporal's head under his arm. The 

 sailors who witnessed this, as a matter of course, supposed the 

 animal to be the corporal's ghost; but an officer of marines, 

 accustomed to the country, knew better. He loaded a couple 



