LOBSTERS, CRAYFISH, ETC. 
265 
terrestrial forms is the great cocoa-nut crab (Birgns latro), found in the islands of 
the Indo-Pacific seas, and remarkable not only for its great size and habits, but also 
for having the abdomen symmetrical and covered above with a series of horny plates. 
These animals inhabit deep burrows, which they hollow out beneath the roots of 
trees, and carpet with fibres stripped 
from cocoa-nuts. Periodically, how¬ 
ever, they are compelled to visit the 
sea to moisten their gills; and here 
they lay their eggs, the young being 
hatched and living for some time on 
the coast. They live principally 
upon cocoa-nuts, which fall from the 
palms, but they do not climb the trees 
after the fruit. To get at the con¬ 
tents of the nut, the crab first tears 
away the fibre overlying the three 
“ eyes,” and then _ hammers away 
with its claws at the latter until a 
hole is made, when it extracts the 
kernel by means of its smaller 
pincers. Some observers state that 
after drilling through the perforated 
eye, the crab grasps the nut in its 
claws and breaks it against a stone. 
In the next tribe, or Thalas- 
sinidea, the carapace is much com¬ 
pressed and has a small rostrum, but 
the abdomen is well developed and 
often wider in the middle than in 
front. As in the short-tailed group, 
the fourth pair of thoracic limbs are 
enlarged and generally completely 
chelate, while the four succeeding 
pairs, of which the last is smaller 
than the rest, usually terminate in 
simple claws. All the members of 
this group are exclusively marine, 
living at the bottom of the sea 
buried a foot or more in the mud. 
The accompanying figure represents 
a species (Thaumastocheles zeleuca) 
obtained at a depth of four hundred fathoms in the West Indies. It is character¬ 
ised by the extraordinary development of the pincers of the right claw, which are 
not only very long and slender but beset with spine-like teeth. The creature is 
totally blind, having lost both eyes and eye-stalks. 
In the tribe of the Scyllaridea none of the limbs of the thorax are truly chelate, 
one-clawed lobster, Thctuviastocheles zeleuca (nat. size). 
