Among other stalked-eyed
crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and
which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise--the
fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to
the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish gather together--two or
three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves and bark of the
mangroves; some excavate galleries in the living trunks. The insidious
cobra does not wear any calcareous covering beyond the frail tiny
bivalves which guard the head--a scandalously small proportion of its
naked length--but lines its tunnels with the materials whence shell is
made, smooth and white as porcelain. How this delicate creature with
less of substance than an oyster--a mere worm of semi-transparent, stiff
slime--bores in hard wood along and across the grain, housing itself as
it proceeds, and never by any chance breaking in upon its neighbours,
though the whole of the trunk of the tree be honeycombed, savours of
another wonder. Authorities consider the bivalve shell too delicate and
frail to be employed in the capacity of a drill, and one investigator
has come to the conclusion that the rough fleshy parts of the animal,
probably the foot or mantle, acting as a rasp, forms the true boring
instrument.
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