PAGURUS EERNHARDUS. 359 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



PAGURUS BERNHARDUS " HERMIT CRAB." 



" But in the porch doth evermore abide 

 An hideous giant, awful to behold, 

 That stops the entrance with his spacious stride, 

 And with the terror of his countenance bold 

 Full many doth affray." 



IT is curious to observe the strange alliances by which 

 animals of most opposite habits, and evidently remote 

 from each other in zoological resemblance, are some- 

 times associated, the necessities of the one being pro- 

 vided for in an extraordinary manner by some pecu- 

 liarity in the structure or general ceconomy of the 

 other, without which the existence of a creature so 

 constituted would be impossible. 



The PAGURUS BERNHARDUS, or HERMIT CRAB 

 (PL VII. fig. 1), is a crustacean whose appearance must 

 be familiar to every one frequenting the sea-shore. 

 If it is not, the reader has only to take advantage of 

 a low tide upon some shelving beach in order to gratify 

 his curiosity. In such situations he will doubtless be 

 puzzled at beholding a number of turbinated shells 

 traversing the sands in all directions, as if of their 

 own accord, but after a fashion evidently widely dif- 

 ferent from what would be followed by the proper 



