Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/157

Rh If the tree is a sloping one, and there are rocks underneath, he climbs up again, carrying the nut with him, and drops it on a rock, where it will be broken. If the situation is not favorable for this performance, he digs into the eye-holes until he makes an entrance sufficiently large to admit his pincers, with which he withdraws the meat.

"These land-crabs are excellent eating, though they are rather too oily for a delicate stomach. They live in large holes, which they dig themselves and line with the fibre torn from the cocoanut-shell. They grow to a great size, and sometimes a single crab will yield a quart of oil. They are distinctively land-crabs, and the natives say they only use the sea to bathe in. We asked our guide if all crabs in Samoa are good to eat, and he answered that all land-crabs were, but the sea ones were doubtful, some of them being poisonous at certain seasons of the year.