THE PAGUEID^ 159 



a delicacy. The naturalists visited Santa Cruz-Major in 

 search of it for the curious reason that there are no pigs in 

 that island. ' Wild pigs,' they say, ' destroy not only these 

 crabs, but dig up Shore Crabs (Ocypoda) and Land Crabs 

 from their holes. In Ceylon, near Trincomali, the wild 

 swine come down every night to the beach to dig up crabs, 

 and large tracts of sandy beach are ploughed up by them 

 in the search.' 



Cenobita, Latreille, 1826, while agreeing with the pre- 

 ceding genus in the character of the antennae, approaches 

 the next family in the formation of the pleon. This is 

 soft and membranous and twisted on itself; the dorsal 

 plates are narrow, with appendages to the segments as in 

 Birgus, but those of the sixth segment are well developed 

 and unsym metrical, the appendage on the left being the 

 larger. The species protect themselves in a variety of 

 shells, and are widely distributed over the Indo-Pacific 

 region, Genobite rugosa, Milne-Edwards, being within 

 those limits almost ubiquitous. 



FuTnily 2. — Paguridce. 



The first antennee have a peduncle of moderate size, 

 the first joint short and stout, the second and third slender 

 and cylindrical ; both the flagella are small. In the second 

 antennae the peduncle is sub-cylindrical. The branchial 

 plumes are laminar. The species are marine. The genera 

 in Dr. Henderson's reckoning are nineteen, two or three 

 of which are included in the British Fauna. In fourteen 

 of the genera the pleon is spirally twisted or bent abruptly, 

 soft and membranous, with imperfect segmentation, while 

 in the remaining five it is not spirally twisted, and it 

 has distinct movable segments which are usually cal- 

 cified. 



Pagurus, Fabricius, 1793, originally included the whole 

 family of crustaceans that walk about with borrowed shells, 

 though beginning with the above-described latro, which 

 has no such domicile. It is now greatly restricted, and it 

 may be useful to point out some of the characters by 

 13 



