92 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



cocoa-nuts, and with its enormous pincers tears away the outer 

 covering, reducing it to a mass of ravelled threads. This sub- 

 stance is carried by the crabs into their holes, for the purpose of 

 forming a bed whereon they can rest when they change their 

 shells, and the Malays are in the habit of robbing the burrows of 

 these stored fibres, which are ready picked for them, and which 

 they use as "junk," i.e. a rough kind of oakum, which is em- 

 ployed for caulking the seams of vessels, making mats, and similar 

 purposes. When the crab has freed the nut from the husk, it 

 introduces the small end of a claw into one of the little holes 

 which are found at one end of the cocoa-nut, and by turning the 

 daw backwards and forwards, as if it were a bradawl, the crab 

 contrives to scoop out the soft substance of the nut. 



According to the observations of Messrs. Tyerman and Bennett, 

 the well-known missionaries to the South Seas, the Eobber Crab 

 has another method of getting at the cocoa-nut, and displays 

 an instinctive knowledge of political economy which is very 

 remarkable. 



"These animals live under the cocoa-nut trees, and subsist 

 upon the fruit which they find upon the ground. With tlieir 

 powerful front claws they tear off the fibrous husk ; afterwards, 

 inserting one of the sharp points of the same into a hole at the 

 end of the nut, they beat it with violence against a stone until it 

 cracks ; the shell is then easily pulled to pieces, and the precious 

 fruit within devoured at leisure. Sometimes, by widening the 

 hole with one of their round, gimlet claws, or enlarging the 

 breach with their forceps, they effect sufficient entrance to enable 

 them to scoop out the kernel, without the trouble of breaking 

 the unwieldy nut. 



" These crabs burrow in the earth, under the roots of the trees 

 tliat furnish them with provisions — prudently storing up in their 

 holes large quantities of cocoa-nuts, stripped of their husk, at 

 those times when the fruits are most abundant, against the recur- 

 ring intervals when they are scarce. We are informed that if 

 the long and delicate antennre of these robust creatures be touched 

 with oil, they instantly die. They are not found on any of these 

 islands except the small coral ones, of which they are the 

 principal occupants. The people here account them delicious 

 food." 



The palm-climbing habits of the Eobber Crab are mentioned 



