258 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



of investigation : meanwhile, the account given by 

 Professor Owen of the digestive organs is sufficiently 

 curious to be quoted. The animal has four separate 

 stomachs : " The first, which is membranous, receives 

 the bile by a large orifice placed near its connection 

 with the second digestive cavity, which is smaller and 

 more muscular ; to this succeeds a third, the sides of 

 which are gathered into broad longitudinal lamellae, 

 precisely similar to those of a ruminant ; and to ren- 

 der the analogy still more perfect, a groove is found 

 running along the walls of the second cavity from one 

 orifice to the other, apparently subservient to rumi- 

 nation. The fourth stomach is thin, and its walls 

 smooth.'' " A mollusc equipped with the ruminating 

 series of stomachs, is paradoxical enough ; but what 

 shall we say to this ruminating Mollusc when we find 

 him not to be a vegetable feeder ? 



One of these Pleurobranchi is restins; on a whelk- 

 shell inhabited by our friend the Hermit-crab, of whose 

 habits we learned something at p. 49. I did not then 

 know that the fine old naturalist Swammerdamm had 

 argued, and very ingeniously too, against the belief 

 that this crab inhabited the shell of another animal, 

 which he calls a fable, and which on anatomical grounds 

 he endeavours to disprove, declaring our friend to be 

 a Crab-Snail."|- Although he was unquestionably wrong 

 in this, he was right enough in laughing at Aristotle 

 and ^lian for asserting that the crab lived with the mol- 



* Owen : Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, p. 558. 

 t Swammerdamm : Bihel der Natur, p. 64, et seq. 



