THE MILK IN TUE COCO-NUT 187 



mainly affected by the coco-nut palm; for cojo-nuts are 

 essentially shore-lovinf? trees, and thrive best in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of the sea. Amonf, the fallen 

 nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab (his appropriate 

 Latin name is Birgus latro) makes great and dreaded havoc. 

 To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a 

 pair of front legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, 

 supplemented by a last or tail-end piiir armed only with very 

 narrow and slender pincers. He subsists entirely upon a 

 coco-nut diet. Setting to work upon a big fallen nut — with 

 the husk on, coco-nuts measure in the raw state about twelve 

 inches the long way — he tears off all the coarse fibre bit by 

 bit, and gets down at last to the hard shell. Then he 

 hammers away with his heavy claw on the softest eye-hole 

 till he has pounded an opening right through it. This done 

 he twists round his body so as to turn his back upon the 

 coco-nut he is operating upon (crabs are never famous 

 either for good manners or gracefulness) and proceeds 

 awkwardly but effectually to extract all the white kernel or 

 pulp through the breach with his narrow pair of hind 

 pincers. Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value 

 of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for 

 he collects the fibre in surprising quantities to line his 

 burrow, and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious 

 couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs, and 

 the rapacity and cunning of all -appropriating man ! The 

 spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fibre 

 it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk 

 on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab 

 who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great lump 

 of fat under the robber's capacious tail, and sometimes gets 

 from it as much as a good quart of what may be practically 

 considered as limpid coco-nut oil. Sic vos nun vohis is 

 certainly the melancholy refrain of all natural history. 

 13 



