BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



crabs and put them on view in an aquarium. 

 Within a few seconds after regaining their balance 

 they would cling together as closely as the pro- 

 verbial burr or tar baby, and would begin to filch 

 sea-weed from one another and landscape garden 

 themselves. With eyes comically raised they would 

 reach out with their claws, feel among the growths 

 on the back of one of their fellows and pluck a 

 bit of weed. The broken end was then placed in 

 their mouth, probably to moisten it with a sticky 

 secretion, and it was then solemnly planted on 

 some shady portion of their anatomy where the 

 crop was not doing so well. The comedy of it was 

 only enhanced by the seriousness of the operation, 

 — creatures with no means of defence endeavoring 

 to efface themselves by transplanting sea -weed, 

 sponges, sea-anemones, anything which they could 

 move and which would take root on the hard, 

 rough surface of their body. 



A few weeks before, I had seen the swimming 

 host of these self-same barnacles, tunicates and 

 crabs scuttling about the submerged light, and 

 now they had staked their all of life by settling 

 down on this ready-made surface in mid-water. 

 Here was a fascinating halfway house between 

 the eggs and the larvse and young in various free- 

 swimming stages, and the centuries-old permanent 

 coral reef itself, fathoms down, on the bottom of 

 the bay. 



I have material for a half dozen technical papers 

 on the ecology of these relationships. In this 



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