Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1891 — A KING CRAB FROM JAPAN. [ARTICLE]

A KING CRAB FROM JAPAN.

He Is Eighty Years Old and Has a Stretch of Eleven Feet. The king of crabs ornaments the cabin of the British steamship Euphrates, which arrived from Japan with a cargo of tea, says the New York Recorder. He is the biggest specimen of his kind ever seen in New York, and is known as a lion crab. Capt. James Edwards, the commander of the Euphrates, and his crew had a lively time in capturing the crustacean. He was seen when the vessel was at Hakodate, Yezzo. Efforts were to capture him alive, but he fought so valiantly that he lost his life in iiis struggle to escape. He was palled aboard and stuffed as a curiosity, and now occupies a place against the wall of Capt. Edwards’ cabin, with an inscription in Japanese above, which, translated, means “a thousand miles in a thousand minutes.” He will be taken to the London Zoological gardens. He is valued at $250. In his native element the crab was of a deep green color, but in death he became red. The body is round, resembling that of a turtle, and is 7 inches thick and 40 inches in circumference. There are 10 legs, the forward ones measuring fit inches in length' and the hindmost pair 25 inches. The pincers of the forward legs are each 0 inches in length; the first joint is 22 inches, the second 8 inches, and the third 25 inches in Length. The distance from claw to claw measures 11 feet. His appearance indicated that he might have made a, fierce battle for his captors and afforded food enough when killed for the entire ship's company. One of the sailors, a Japanese named Karena, explained that the lion crab is a very rare specimen and difficult to capture. He is supposed to move at the rate of a mile a minute, and is held in reverence by many as the religious sects in Japan. He grows an inch every year, and this particular crab ■is supposed to have been nearly 80 years old at the time of his decease.