INTRODUCTION. V 



other orthopterous insects, and on one occasion observed the natives employing the Eriocheir- 

 Japonicus, De Haan, as food, throwing them alive upon the embers of their fire, and, when 

 burnt crisp, consuming them, shell and all. 



In the course of our dredgings in the China Sea, numerous new species of Leucosim 

 were collected, generally affecting a sandy bottom, and living among the corallines and 

 madrepores at considerable depths. They are seldom found in muddy places, but prefer 

 deep sandy banks, where they move in a sluggish manner, and seem destitute of acute 

 perceptions. Sufficiently protected by their hard porcellanous shells, they want the rapid 

 progression and threatening attitudes assumed by many other genera. We have figured one 

 of the most beautiful of these new discoveries, which is of a dead white colour covered with 

 numerous round crimson spots. The genus Dorippe is another form very common in the 

 China Sea, living in deep water, from twenty to thirty fathoms, on a muddy bottom. The 

 Chinese fishermen often bring them up in their nets, and among large numbers which I 

 have observed in their boats, I have found nearly every individual with an adventitious body 

 (I believe an alcyonoid sponge) attached to the upper surface of the carapace, and retained 

 in its position by the hooked claws of the two small posterior dorsal pairs of legs. This 

 body is divisible into a thin brown layer, with concentric fibres, and an external white lamina 

 with radiating fibres and a dark central nucleus. I have frequently noticed the same pecu- 

 liarity in Dromia verrucosipes, and in many specimens both of Dorippe and Dromia which I 

 examined in this condition, the carapaces were perfectly soft, as if this foreign body served 

 them as a protection during the period of their moulting. The Caphyrea pectinicola, White, 

 which was dredged by us in the Sunda Straits from thirteen fathoms, bears a small pecten 

 shell in a similar manner, hooking itself on to the ears of the shell by the claws of its hinder 

 legs, its soft carapace being thus secured from harm by this adventitious covering. Sir 

 E. Belcher informs me that he discovered another species in the Gulf of Papagaya inhabiting 

 the single valve of a Terebratula, which he states was in a partially softened condition. 

 Many other genera, as Hyas, Maia, Arciopsis, Mithrax, and Pericera, are known to have 

 similar propensities, loading their backs with foreign bodies, such as sponges, alga?, and other 

 phytozooic and vegetable productions. 



Near Manado, in the island of Celebes, I visited a woody tract which harboured numbers 

 of Gelasimi of several species, many of them of the most beautifully varied markings and 

 colour. Among them were varieties of our G. bellator, of a green colour with black 



b 



