Then, perhaps, trees and
bushes are drifted thither before the trade-wind; and entangled in their
roots are seeds of other plants, and eggs or cocoons of insects; and so a
few flowers and a few butterflies and beetles set up for themselves upon
the new land. And then a bird or two, caught in a storm and blown away
to sea finds shelter in the cocoa-grove; and so a little new world is set
up, in which (you must remember always) there are no four-footed beasts,
nor snakes, nor lizards, nor frogs, nor any animals that cannot cross the
sea. And on some of those islands they may live (indeed there is reason
to believe they have lived), so long, that some of them have changed
their forms, according to the laws of Madam How, who sooner or later fits
each thing exactly for the place in which it is meant to live, till upon
some of them you may find such strange and unique creatures as the famous
cocoa-nut crab, which learned men call _Birgus latro_. A great crab he
is, who walks upon the tips of his toes a foot high above the ground. And
because he has often nothing to eat but cocoa-nuts, or at least they are
the best things he can find, cocoa-nuts he has learned to eat, and after
a fashion which it would puzzle you to imitate. Some say that he climbs
up the stems of the cocoa-nut trees, and pulls the fruit down for
himself; but that, it seems, he does not usually do. What he does is
this: when he finds a fallen cocoa-nut, he begins tearing away the thick
husk and fibre with his strong claws; and he knows perfectly well which
end to tear it from, namely, from the end where the three eye-holes are,
which you call the monkey's face, out of one of which you know, the young
cocoa-nut tree would burst forth. And when he has got to the eye-holes,
he hammers through one of them with the point of his heavy claw. So far,
so good: but how is he to get the meat out? He cannot put his claw in.
He has no proboscis like a butterfly to insert and suck with. He is as
far off from his dinner as the fox was when the stork offered him a feast
in a long-necked jar. What then do you think he does? He turns himself
round, puts in a pair of his hind pincers, which are very slender, and
with them scoops the meat out of the cocoa-nut, and so puts his dinner
into his mouth with his hind feet. And even the cocoa-nut husk he does
not waste; for he lives in deep burrows which he makes like a rabbit; and
being a luxurious crab, and liking to sleep s