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.