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on the authority of several Chinese, that similar crabs are found 
in a lake in China, and that they possess the wonderful property of 
changing into stone, immediately on their being taken out of the 
water. 
These fossils are however, in fact, found, according to Bourguet, 
in different parts of the sea-coast of China, in the island of Hainan, 
and on the coasts of Japan and of Coromandel. They are generally 
very much mutilated ; but their crust bears oftentimes more the 
appearance of that of a crab recently taken from the sea, than those 
of Shepey. 
Plate XVII. Fig. 10, represents part of the claw of a crab, in its 
matrix, from St. Peter’s Mountain, Maestricht. It is observed by 
Faujas St. Fond, that there is no fossil, in this and the neighbouring 
mountains, more frequent than claws of crabs ; but it is an extremely 
remarkable circumstance, that, notwithstanding the abundance in 
which these remains are here found, no remains of the body, or of 
the other parts of the animal, are discovered. After long reflecting 
on this circumstance, this industrious inquirer thought it right to 
conclude, that these remains had belonged to some crab of the parasitic 
kind, as Cancer bernhardus, Linn. The softness and delicacy of every 
other part of its covering, except that of its claws, would, he thinks, 
satisfactorily explain why these alone have been thus preserved. 
In confirmation of this opinion Latreille, a naturalist who has paid 
particular attention to the examination of Crustacea, concludes, from 
the curvature, direction, and general form of the arm of the crab, 
figured in Faujas’s work, and from the absence of any other part ot 
the animal, that it must have belonged to an hermit crab, Pagurus 
bernhardus. In both, he observes, the right arm is the strongest, 
and the form of the hand is the same ; the only difference between 
them being a larger number of asperities on the finger of the fossil 
crab, which is also rather longer than that of the recent crab. The 
upper edge of the hand, too, of the recent animal, has also some 
