290 SUPPLEMENT 



that the crabs, craw-fish, cericse, the paguri, the lizards, and 

 even serpents, descend every year to the sea for the purpose 

 of bathing, of changing skin, or shell, that the tourlourous, 

 crabs and ceriques, have also the object of depositing their 

 eggs there. He equally gives the name of tourlourou to the 

 Crustacea which we have already mentioned, and which are 

 exclusively found at the point of Barbary. The habit of de- 

 vouring their disabled comrades, he sapiently conceives to be 

 the cause of the maleficent qualities which they possess. He 

 is much more exact and judicious in his remarks on the sexual 

 and external differences of the touroulous and crabs: these he 

 establishes on the proportions and form of the tail. 



The white crabs are the most bulky of all. Some have 

 been seen, one of whose pincers could contain a man's fist. 

 They remain at the foot of trees, and in lone and marshy situa- 

 tions near the sea shore ; they make holes in the earth, and 

 retire thither, as the rabbits do, into their burrows, seldom ap- 

 pearing during the day. On searching in the sand to dis- 

 cover them, it is found that they always have one half of their 

 body in the water. They are hunted principally in the night, 

 the people carrying flambeaux of candle-wood in their hands ; 

 and as they do not remove to any distance from their retreats, 

 and even withdraw into the first hole which they can find, 

 they must be seized the moment they are perceived. 



Labat has observed of the white crabs, that the necessity 

 of changing air, and the fear of being covered by the waves of 

 the sea, oblige them sometimes to issue forth by daylight from 

 their retreats. The holes which they inhabit are then marked, 

 and a stick is, on their return, passed into them, which retains 

 the animals captive. When the tide has flowed, the stick is 

 removed, and the crab is then found smothered at the edge of 

 the hole. The negroes unite their claws, fixing them one in 

 another, then string these Crustacea by means of the ring thus 

 formed, and thus carry them to market. 



