The Grab. 
437 
recured 55 (. Euphues , p. 61). He does not tell how the 
sow contrives to catch the crab. 
The eccentric motion of the crab is humorously 
alluded to by Webster:— 
a Like the irregular crab, 
Which, though’t goes backward, thinks that it goes right, 
Because it goes its own way.” 
(.Duchess of Malfi, i. 2.) 
And Hamlet mockingly tells Polonius , “ Yourself, sir, 
should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go back¬ 
ward” ( 'Hamlet , ii. 2, 205). The method of locomotion 
adopted by the crab is more correctly described by 
Oviedo, in an account of a soft-bodied species, found in 
South America:— 
“ There are also a strange kinde of crabbes, which come forth of 
certaine holes of the earth, that they [themselves make: the head 
and bodie of these make one round thing, much like to the hood of a 
falcon, having foure feete comming out of the one side, and as manie 
out of the other; they have also two mouthes, like unto a paire of 
small pincers, the one bigger then the other; wherewith they bite, but 
•doe no great hurt, because they are not venemous : their skin and bodie 
is smooth, and thinne, as is the skinne of a man, saving that it is 
.somewhat harder; their colour is russet, or white, or blew, and walke 
sidelong; they are verie good to be eaten, in so much that the Chris¬ 
tians travailing by the Firme Land, have beene greatly nourished by 
them, because they are found in manner everie where: in shape and 
forme they are much like unto the crabbe which we paint for the 
.signe Cancer, and like unto those which are found in Spaine and Anda¬ 
lusia in the river Guadalchiber, where it entreth into the sea, and in 
the sea coasts there they are sometimes hurtful!, so that they that eate 
of them dye, but this chanceth onely when they have eaten any vene¬ 
mous thing, or of the venemous apples wherewith the caniball archers 
poison their arrowes, whereof I will speak hereafter, and for this cause 
the Christians take heede how they eate of these crabbes, if they finde 
them neere unto the said apple trees.” ( Purchas , vol. hi. p. 979.) 
In Pnrcbas’s collection also there is an account of a 
voyage undertaken by George, Earl of Cumberland, in 
the year 1594, to the Southern Seas. The earl’s chap¬ 
lain and attendant, Dr. Layfield, who writes a description 
