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 Leucosice 
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 Caphjrea 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 Ilyas, Maia , Arctopsis, Mithrax, and Pericera, are known to have 
similar propensities, loading their backs with foreign bodies, such as sponges, algee, 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 
