nut to peel, and when it is peeled he transfers
it to his larder in his hole. Just as
the eating-houses have hams, or rounds of
beef, always in cut, he has a peeled nut
always in the almond state. A nut lasts
him about a week.

The sepoy-crab does not feed upon cocos
only. Mr. Cuming saw one of them upon a
palm-tree, called the Pandanus odoratissimus.
Dr. Charles Reynaud has seen these
in great quantities upon the little islands
at the entry of the Bay of Diego Garcia,
where there are no coco-palms, and where
they fed upon the Mape-tree — Cissus
Mapia.

The savans, as usual, have made a curious
hotch-potch of the naming of this lobster.
Leach called him the Birgus latro; latro
means a thief, but what Birgus means, no
book, or man, I wot of, can tell me. I
guess that as Pagurus means a marine animal,
Birgus means a rock animal, and the
probability is not lessened, because the
crustacean does not live among rocks at all,
for most of these learned terms are the
fossils of ancient errors. The French fishermen
call the soldier-crab the pauvre homme
(the poor man), because he is very naked,
and has not even a shell of his own. The
sepoy-crab is a coast, and not a marine,
animal, and he is not a poor man, moreover,
as he lives independently upon his
means. The most common name for him
is the crab-thief. The Dutch called him
Don Diego int volle harnasch – Don Diego
who steals the nuts – Don Diego, because
they fancied they saw the form of a man
in armour upon his back, and nut-stealer,
on account of his taking his natural food.
What with colonisers, exterminators, annexers,
adulteraters, and bank and railway
speculators, there appears to be
enough of thieves, and it would be surely
wrong, impolitic, and unfair, to give them
the countenance of an honest crusted animal.
Agassiz, in his very useful book on zoological
nomenclature, says the proper name of
the crab is the Decapoda anomoura, the tailless
ten feet. He refers to Leach for the
explanation of the common scientific name,
Birgus latro, and Leach uses the name without
giving any explanation of it whatever —
or, at least, I could not discover any. As for
the proper name, I humbly submit it contains
as many errors as syllables. Negatives
are but rarely descriptive, and we are not
far advanced in forming an idea of an
animal when told it has not a tail. The
claws of the sepoy-crab are hands; the last
pair of so-called feet are used to hold the
crustacean in his hole, as they serve to keep
the soldier-crab in his borrowed shell.

The largest kinds of sepoy-crabs hold
themselves in their holes with such tenacity
that the natives are unable to drag them
out. As for the individuals of the ordinary
size, the blacks put their arms
into their holes, and, seizing their claws
in a bunch, whip them out suddenly and
skilfully. It is surprising how rarely the
blacks are pinched. The sepoy-crab, when
in his hole, sleeps, or respires, and moves
slowly; before his obtuse senses have
warned him of the intrusion, his formidable
claws are clasped by the muscular
hand which pulls him out of his stronghold.
When an unlucky or an unskilful finger is
pinched, the sepoy lets go his hold, the instant
he is seized by the abdomen. Sometimes
a kernel is dropped into the hole, and
when the crab takes hold of it, he lets himself
be pulled out rather than let go his hold.
In their battles with each other, the sepoy-crabs
will seize hold of each other's abdomens,
and will not let go until one of them has
ceased to live. The sepoy can be made to
do the same thing for himself; for when his
abdomen is tickled, it is said he will seize
hold of it with his great claw, and never
relax his hold until he dies.

The sepoy-crabs are excellent eating.
Gourmets of the Mauritius have them
sent to them alive from the coco islands.
They are sent in boxes which are strongly
nailed down. Such is the strength of these
crustaceans that they have been known to
lift up the lid of a box with a hundred pound
weight on the top of it There are a few
holes made in the box to admit air, and
a coco broken in two is placed within it;
and then, without further precautions or other
nurriture, the sepoy-crab arrives in good
condition after voyages of seven or eight
days' duration.

Herbst says, great care must be taken to
remove certain dangerous parts of these
lobsters in the preparation of them for the
table. The sepoy-crab is cooked like a
lobster. The abdomen, popularly called the
tail, is the titbit. Natives of the tropics
who catch the sepoy-crab and cook him and
eat him, and call him a thief all the while,
remark merrily that he is obliging enough
to carry in his tail a butter, in which he fries
capitally.

The rhinoceros beetle (scarabæus, or
oryctes rhinoceros) is described as the most
formidable enemy of the coco-palms. The
general aspect, the forms of the corselet and
elytres, and the little horn upon the snout of
this beetle, suggests immediately the idea of
a miniature model of the unicorn rhinoceros,
rather more than an inch and a-half long
and three-quarters broad. The rhinoceros
beetle has been called oryctes, which is the
Greek for a digger or miner. The male
beetle cuts his way into the stalks of the
leaves, and eats the topmost sprout, the delicious
coco- cabbage. The female rhinoceros
beetle perforates the trunks of the trees to
deposit her eggs in them. The damage done
by these beetles was so great in the time of
Leschenault de la Tour, that he says the
government of Pondicherry employed two