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"larvae of insects, water-snails, tadpoles, or frogs, which come 

 within reach " of its claws as the animal stands at the entrance 

 of its burrow. Even " the water-rat is liable to the same fate. 

 Passing too near the fatal den, possibly in search of a stray cray- 

 fish, whose flavor he highly appreciates, the vole is himself 

 seized and held till he is suffocated, when his captor easily re- 

 verses the conditions of the anticipated meal." 



" In fact, few things in the way of food are amiss to the cray- 

 fish ; living or dead, fresh or carrion, animal or vegetable, it 

 is all one." But I cannot in this short chapter say more in re- 

 gard to these wonderful little animals; my space will not admit 

 of it, and the subject is a very large one. It reads like a good 

 novel in Iluxley's celebrated treatise upon the group. 



Crabs differ from the crays in having a much reduced and 

 shortened abdomen, that would easily escape the notice of an 

 ordinary observer, and is not used as a swimming organ, as is 

 that part of the economy of a crayfish, from which latter they 

 present many wide differences both in the matter of structure 

 and habits, though " attentive examination shows that the plan 

 of construction of the crab is, in all fundamental respects, the 

 same as that of the crayfish." (Huxley). 



I have availed myself of the opportunities to study many kinds 

 of crabs, in not a few countries, and a great many parts of this 

 country. One afternoon, when walking up over the steep hills 

 in the rear of the town of Tape Haytien, Hayti, my attention 

 was called to the numerous burrows in the clayey soil upon either 

 side of the roadway. Further along in the forests these became 

 still more numerous. These excavations were made by a species 

 of burrowing land crabs, belonging to a genus well represented 

 in the West Indian islands. In Jamaica, for example, there are 

 thousands of them, and from their coloration they are called the 

 Violet land crabs. I have made a drawing of one of these, and it 

 is given here as an illustration of land crabs in general. They 

 frequently live in the mangrove swamps and subsist upon fruits, 

 though they will eat almost anything. 



About the graves in the cemeteries of Jamaica hundreds of 

 these burrows are to be seen, and the land crabs that inhabit 

 them are known to go down and feed upon the corpses. West 

 Indians, nevertheless, eat quantities of them, but they are very 

 careful to capture only those that live a long way from the 

 burying grounds. The natives catch them in ordinary box-traps. 



