The Zoologist— December, 1870. 2411 



Calling C;aJ..-But what, you will ask, are calling crabs? I could tell you better 

 by a drawing than by words; but as I have not one at hand. I must ask you lo 

 conceive a moderate-sized crab, ihe front of whose carapace is very broad, and almost 

 straight, with a channel along it, in which lie, right and left, his two eyes, each on a 

 toot-stalk half as long as the breadth of his body ; so that the crab when at rest carries 

 his eyes as epaulettes, and peeps out at the joint of each shoulder. But when business 

 IS to be done, the eye-stalks jump bolt upright, and side by side, like a pair of Utile 

 hght-houses, and surrey the field of battle in a fashion utterly ridiculous. But as if 

 he were not ridiculous enough even thus, he is (as Mr. Wood well puts it) like a small 

 man gifted with one arm of Hercules, and another of Tom Thumb. One of his claw- 

 arms, generally the left, has dwindled to a mere nothing, and is not seen ; while along 

 the whole front of his shell lies folded one mighty right arm, on which he trusts ; and 

 with that arm, when danger appears, he beckons the enemy to " come on," with such 

 wild defiance that he has gained therefrom the name of Gelasimus vocans, " The 

 Calling Laughable"; and it were well if all scientific names were as well fitted. He 

 is, as might be guessed, a shrewd fighter, and uses (they say) the true old " Bristol 

 guard" iu boxing, holding his long arm across his body, and fencing and biting 

 therewith swiftly and sharply enough. Moreover, he is a respectable animal, and has 

 a wife, and takes care of her; and to see him in his glory (they say) you should see 

 him sitting in the mouth of his burnnv, his spouse packed safe behind him inside, 

 while he beckons and brandishes, proclaiming to all passers by the treasure, which he 

 protects, while he defies them to touch her. Such is the " calling crab," of whom 

 I must say, that if he were not made on purpose to be laughed at, then I should be 

 inclined to suspect that nothing was made for any purpose whatever.— ' i,e«to-i from 

 the Tropics,' by C. Kingsley. 



[A very similar passage iu Wood's ' Natural History,' to which Mr. Kingsley 

 refers, will be familiar to my readers. — E. Newman.l 



The Teachings of Galls.~The reading of Professor Huxley's presidential address 

 to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered at Liverpool, has 

 brought to my recollection a remarkable instance of the development of active organs 

 foreign to the normal plant, and springing from a growth of pathological origin. 

 viz. a gall produced by the ovipositor of a Cynips. In Germar's ' Zeilschrift fiir die 

 Entomologie,' 1843, vol. iv. p. 40.5, Professor Hartig describes the gall of Cynips lucida, 

 Kollar, at the apex of young shoots of Q. pubescens, as follows :— "The gall, like those 

 of Teras terminalis, Rhodites Rosce and Cynips Radicis, consists of an agglomerated 

 cellulose mass, in which from three to thirty and more larval cells are imbedded. This 

 many-chambered gall is in its whole circumference closely beset with thin stalks, each 

 about two or three lines in length. Each stalk ends in a club-shaped open vesicle or 

 gland (Druese) in which a sticky sap is secreted, which probably serves for nothing 

 else than a protection from parasitic Hymenoptera." Prof. Hartig then proceeds: — 

 " Here organs are produced by the sting of an insect; functions appear in the organs 

 thus formed, although the latter are quite foreign to the oak itself! It is a foreign 

 organism which causes these formations ! The rich indications this insect gives us 



