4 
HISTORY OF BRITISH CRUSTACEA. 
monstrated on the subject, seemed to think this but a rea- 
sonable and just retaliation, a sort of payment in kind ; re- 
plying with a grin and chuckle of triumph, * Crab eat black 
man ; black man eat he !’ ”* 
Some of us have witnessed the moulting of a Crab, and 
mysterious does it seem to the novice in Natural History 
when he finds that a hard Lobster or Crab, with a coat of 
stony hardness, and which requires great strength of arm and 
knife, and even of hammer, sometimes, to open and cut or 
break it, casts off its old covering entire — the joint of every 
part of its thousand -jointed body, antennae, foot-jaws, claws, 
and tail. And not only does it cast off these hard external 
parts, but the very linings of its gills, of its stomach, of its 
eyes and of other parts are thrown off, and thus, when the 
creature has escaped, the shell seems as perfect nearly as the 
animal itself. We often see cases from the Brazils of a gaudy 
Grapsus, more delicate even than the new-coated animal — 
seeing the parts are translucent ; and the cases are only the 
cast-off skins, rejected by what naturalists call ecdysis , but 
our Saxon forefathers would have termed moulting. 
Mr. R. Q. Couch, a most able naturalist, remarked at the 
anniversary meeting of the Cornwall Natural History and 
* Gosse’s Aquarium, p. 198. 
