On the other hand, Darwin, when he visited the Keeling Islands, was told by Mr. Liesk, an English resident on one of them, that the crabs fed upon such nuts only as happened to fall from the trees. The Keeling and Samoan Islands are, however, some 5,000 miles apart, and it is at least possible that the crabs of each, though of the same species, may have learnt a different way of getting at the inside of the cocoanut, especially as elsewhere they seem to practise yet a third method. To begin with Darwin’s account. Mr. Liesk, speaking as an eye-witness, told him that the crab first shredded off the husk, fibre by fibre, beginning always at that part under which the three eyeholes of the nut lay. It then, he said, hammered with its claws, which are heavy and powerful, on one of the eyeholes and, having made an opening, turned round and inserted its thin posterior legs, which are also armed with small pincers, into it, and thus extracted the kernel. This is a plain statement, and in it we see the philosophy of the small and weak pair of claws which are as useful in the last and most satisfactory part of the process as are the larger ones in the pioneer work preceding it. Just as plain, however, is the following statement, which was made by two South Sea missionaries (Mr. Tyerman and Mr. Bennett) at about the same time. They say: “These animals live under the cocoanut trees, and subsist upon the fruit which they find on the ground. With their powerful front claws they tear off the fibrous husk; afterwards inserting one of the sharp points of the same into a hole at the end of the nut, they beat it with violence against a stone until it cracks; the shell is then easily pulled to pieces, and the precious food within devoured at leisure.” Here, then, is quite a different way of getting at the contents of the cocoanut, but the same informants go on to say that “sometimes by widening the hole with one of their round gimlet claws, or enlarging the breach with their forceps, they effect sufficient entrance to enable them to scoop out the kernel without the trouble of breaking the unwieldy nut.” This, perhaps, may mean the same as what Mr. Liesk tells us, but nothing is said about the crab’s turning round. It is not very clear from the account of the two missionaries whether they speak as eye-witnesses or not. Mr. Liesk does, but I should not myself think that his observations had been very exhaustive, and as the _Voyage of the Beagle_, in which they are referred to, was published nearly sixty years ago, it seems to me a pity if the habits of the cocoanut-eating crab have not been more carefully studied since then. I think myself that a crab which lives on cocoanuts, and may possibly climb the trees on which they grow, is worth taking some trouble about. This, however, is not all that the _Birgus latro_—for that is his scientific name—does. Not only does he live upon land, but he makes a