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The colorful Land Crab is taken from The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1731-1747) by famed naturalist Mark Catesby. He was one of several 18th-century explorers who ventured to remote areas of the world to document regional flora and fauna. A copy of the 1771 edition of the two-volume work is in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation collection.

Amazed by their plentitude, Catesby wrote, "in some Places the Land being almost covered with them, so thick they are . . . the Earth seems to move as they crawl about."