34 PERCY SLADEN TRUST EXPEDITION. 
in burrows in the daytime, sometimes ejecting the large Cardiosoma for the purpose, and 
comes out at night. It is then a striking object, standing up on its claws several inches 
above the ground, with its back dark purple and body white beneath, its long antennze 
waving in every direction, its brilliant eyes following our every movement and its great 
chele ready for any attack. The beast is interesting, as it is entirely an air-breathing 
land form, which nevertheless goes down to the sea to breed and _ possesses a zozea-larva. 
For food it prefers a coconut which has fallen, but will eat any vegetable or fruit. On 
oceasions it ascends the coco-trees, a process rendered easy by the enormous stretch 
of its limbs, which can clasp round their trunks, and undoubtedly nips off the nuts, 
subsequently descending to its feast. It opens the coconut with the great chele. To 
do this it secures itself by its hinder legs to some rock beneath, and holding the nut 
Birgus latro attacking a coconut. 
firmly by one claw, it strips off the husk with the other. Next it keeps biting at the 
shell in one spot until it breaks through, and then chip by chip enlarges the aperture 
to the requisite size. As each large Birgus consumes probably at least 250 nuts a year, 
the damage it does causes it to be carefully sought after, and it is, moreover, of most 
delicate flavour. Of other land-crustacea there is the yellow Geocarcinus under every 
heap of coconut-husks, the hermit Cenodbita, the burrowing Ocypode of the beach, and 
a few Isopods near the settlements. |Earthworms are scarce, save in the regular 
planted land, and of Land-Mollusca we found not a single species. ‘The only reptiles are 
Geckos, which are preyed upon by a few of the spiders, the latter taken together being 
neither abundant in actual numbers nor in variety. Scorpions, centipedes, and 
inillipedes are represented by one or two species of each. The insects generally are 
