HERMIT-CRAB AND \yHELK. 53 



the whelk in order to appropriate his shell ; for the 

 house he last stole, though better than the previous 

 houses, by no means suited him. Mr Bell, in his 

 History of British Crustacea, conjectures that the 

 hermit-crab often eats the mollusc in whose shell he 

 is found — a conjecture adopted by subsequent writers, 

 although Mr Bell owns that he never witnessed the 

 fact. My observation flatly contradicted the conjec- 

 ture. Kean clutched the shell at once, and poked in 

 his interrogatory claw, which, touching the operculum 

 of the whelk, made that animal withdraw and leave an 

 empty space, into which Kean poi3ped his tail. In a 

 few minutes the whelk, tired of this confinement in his 

 own house, and all alarm being over, began to pro- 

 trude himself, and in doing so gently pushed C. K. 

 before him. In vain did the intruder, feeling himself 

 slipping, cling fiercely to the shell ; with slow but 

 irresistible pressure the mollusc ejected him. This 

 was repeated several times, till at length C. K. gave 

 up in despair, and contented himself with his former 

 shell. Thus, instead of eating the whelk (which, I 

 may remark in passing, the crab never does, even in 

 captivity, where food is scanty), he had not even the 

 means of getting him out of his shell, and the conjec- 

 ture of our admirable naturalist must be erased from 

 all Hand-books. 



These traits of manners and morals pleasantly vary 

 our graver observations : but it is only with the higher 

 organisms that we can be so amused ; the lower or- 

 ganisms, although they have their manners and their 



