3846 The Zoologist — February, 1874. 



many more than the Hamburg Aquarium could accommodate, 

 and I was told to put our surplus number in spirits. To me, 

 however, it seems such a horribly cruel thing to plunge into alcohol 

 creatures in the full vigour of life, and it is moreover shockingly in- 

 hospitable to do so to foreign animals after they have been brought 

 from their own far-distant countries. So I wrote to aquarium people 

 everywhere, and succeeded in selling or in giving away all we had 

 to spare ; and then I issued circulars, printed in English, French 

 and German, begging that no more be imported till further orders. 

 My circular came out too late, however, for on the very next 

 Sunday morning I was asked to call at the house of a captain of a 

 IIau)burg and New York steamer to see a lot of these crabs, and I 

 was astonished at beholding a great number, in his garden, walking 

 about and looking like great dully-polished light brown dish-covers 

 marching about by the agency of invisible legs, they being con- 

 cealed by the shield-like carapace, each with a stiff tail trailing 

 behind it. The sight would have been comical had I not been 

 troubled with the remembrance of the dreadful alcohol, for I was 

 bidden to take charge of the whole lot, for various museums; and 

 I accordingly conveyed them to our Gardens in a four-wheel cab, 

 they filling it as high as the base of the windows, and I, seated out- 

 side, was sorely troubled with my charge ; but that night I defiantly 

 resolved what to do. I arranged to secretly keep them alive by 

 sprinkling them with water in a cool place till the following Thurs- 

 day, when the steamer left for London, and this vessel, and two otlier 

 steamers, had on board (by the kindness of Pearson and Langnese, 

 the owners) free accommodation for natural-history purposes, and, 

 among other things, a one-hundred-gallon cask of sea-water placed 

 on end, with a loose cover on it. On Thursday afternoon, therefore, 

 I drove to the harbour with a cabfuU of crabs, emptied the water out 

 of the cask, filled it with the crabs, put on the cover to keep them 

 moist, and saw the steamer off, having previously told a trustwortliy 

 and kind man to throw the crabs overboard into the sea when the 

 steamer got fairly into salt-water a little on tlie British side of the 

 island of Heligoland. This was faithfully done, and I had evidence 

 of it duly furnished to me. It occurred in August, 1866, and I can 

 have no reasonable doubt (in the absence of any evidence showing 

 that others have been since placed in the seas of Northern Europe) 

 but that those which recently were caught on the coast of Holland 

 were either those I thus introduced or their descendants. I may as 



