most subject and exposed to take wrong.
But as subtle and craftie he is, as he
is little; for his manner is to shrowd
and hide himself within the shells of emptie
oysters; and even as he groweth bigger and
bigger, to goe into those that be wider."
Catesby, in his Natural History of Florida,
(folio, London, 1731-43), speaking of the
hermit-crab under the designation of Bernard
l'Hermite', his French appellation, says:
"When they are assailed in the shell in which
they have taken refuge, they thrust forth the
larger claw in a defensive posture, and will
pinch very hard whatever molests them."
This is the same crustacean mentioned by
Hughes in his Natural History of Barbadoes
(folio, London, 1750) as the soldier crab,
assigning for the name a reason which
savours very much of the old soldier: "The
soldier-crab is amphibious, and is thought to
have derived its name from its frequent
change of quarters; for its first appearance
is in a small periwinkle shell; as it grows
too big for this, it looks out for another
empty shell, agreeable to its present bulk;
soon after it takes up its abode in a large
wilk-shell." That crabs know pretty well what they
are about, is apparent also from Pliny's general
description of them (lib. ix. c. 31): "Crabs
delight in soft and delicate places. In winter
they seek after the warme or sunshine shore;
but when summer is come, they retire into
the coole and deepe holes in the shade. All
the sort of them take harme and paire by
winter: in autumne and springe they battle
and waxe fat; and especially when the moon
is at the full; because that planet is
comfortable in the night time, and with her
warme light mitigateth the cold of the night."

Crabs, moreover, have a cultivated taste.
Their fondness for music is mentioned by
several authors, who, however, are silent as
to whether they dance to the tunes in which
they appear so greatly to delight. Conrad
Gesner, in his Fischbuch (folio Franfort-am-Meyn, 1598)
tells the following story
which I translate. He is speaking of
the Taschenkrab (pocket-crab): "The fisher,
men entice these crabs out of their
haunts with sweet songs, knowing how
pleasant unto them is music. They carefully
conceal themselves, and then begin to pipe
with a sweet voice, by which sound these
animals are charmed, and go after it out of
the sea. The fishermen draw gradually off—
the crabs follow, and when on dry land,
are seized and made prisoners.'' Rondelet,
the learned physician of Montpelier,
alludes to the pleasure that crabs take in
music in his Histoire des Poissons. He
also gives them a character for wisdom,
though in his anxiety to establish his position
he proves rather too much. The example he
selects is heracliticus cancer, so called from
its being a native of the shores of Pontus,
near Heraclea. "The wisdom of this crab
is also praised; and it is on this account
that it was represented hanging to the collar
of the Ephesian Diana, as a sign of wisdom
and counsel. Now, its wisdom consists in
this: that, in the spring time, depriving
itself of its shell, and feeling weak and
disarmed, it hides itself without attacking
anything until it has regained its former hard
covering. When the period has arrived
for getting rid of its armour, it runs
backwards and forwards like a mad creature,
seeking for food of all kinds, with which,
when its body is more than ordinarily filled,
the shell violently bursts open."

I have said enough to show how greatly
the sagacity of the crab prevails over that
violence which is the leading characteristic of
the lobster. If additional proof be wanting
of the ferocious nature of the longer-tailed
crustacean, it can be found in Gesner's
veracious volume, where, on the authority of
Olaus Magnus, he gives an engraving of a huge
lobster in the act of devouring a man — not
simply dining off him, as a crab might do, but
literally strangling him in his embraces.
To heighten the probability of this tableau
the lobster in the engraving is represented
about three times the size of the man,
round whose head the animal's pincers are
wreathed into a sort of arbour, pressing him
down into his open mouth. The swimming
man (schwimmenden Mensch) appears
singularly costumed for the enjoyment of
natation, being full-dressed, with garters tied in
bows at his knees, and wearing an elaborate
beard, which resists the power of the water
to take it out of curl. Gesner adds that this
lobster, which is like a rhinoceros, is wonderfully
beautiful and agreeable to behold!

To return to the less pugnacious crab. To
say that he is wholly exemplary is perhaps to
assert too much. I fancy, for example, that
in the article of forage he does not care to
draw the line too closely between meum and
tuum; but then his habits — those with which
he was gifted by nature — are predatory, and
some allowance must be made on their
account. I look upon him as altogether
of a better nature than the lobster, as
having more character about him, as being,
as it were, more a man of the world. He
can live anywhere, do anything, eat anything.

If the crab had not something out of the
common in him, is it likely that learned
astronojners would have placed him so
conspicuously in the zodiac? Trace him
through all the systems, and he figures
prominently in each: whether as the carcati of
the Hindus, the saratãn of the Arabs and
Persians, the karábos of the Greeks (it was
through Juno's interest he got in there, after
being crushed by Hercules when he was sent
to bite the demigod's great toe in the fight
with the Hydra of Lerna), or as the well-
known Cancer ot the Romans and ourselves.
See what a charge is assigned him! A
whole tropic to himself, besides the care of the
summer solstice, with the sole management