THE SOLDIER CRAB. 
45 
specimens, and some of a large Trochus {Meleagris 
picus)^ with pearly interior, as well as a capacious 
Ampullaria, inhabited by the same species. It 
crawls irregularly, but quickly; making its shell 
rattle against the pebbles as it proceeds ; but if 
alarmed, it instantly withdraws into its house, and 
bringing its strong legs around its head in the form 
of a semicircle, claps its greater claw upon the whole, 
presenting, as I have said above, nothing but a hard, 
shelly, prickly, convex surface within the margin of 
the house, so accurately filling the aperture, and so 
strongly held down, that it is impossible to extract 
the animal alive without breaking the shell to frag- 
ments. Yet the wary Soldier is ready for fight; 
while I was holding one in my hand, the rogue pro- 
truded his claw, and seizing the skin of my palm, 
fairly took the piece out. 
The species was the well-known Ccenobita Dioge^ 
neSj and, as I afterwards found, abundantly common 
in the woods near the coast. I even found it nume- 
rous, inhabiting the shell of the same large Helixy 
far up on the side of the mountains, behind Blue- 
fields, in the dryest and most rocky situations. Sir 
H. de la Beche found it inhabiting sea-shells, near 
the Rio Minho, ten miles from the sea. It is evident 
that the active little creatures must have crawled 
this whole distance, and as the Helix is found in a 
living state only in the woods, and, as far as I know, 
only in the mountains, it follows that the Soldiers 
must have travelled up the country in their sea-side 
shells, until they came to the region of the Helixy 
and there have changed their houses, and brought 
