32 Bulletin, Vanderhilt Marine Museum, Vol. Ill 



a peculiar actinoid polyp, which had evidently first grown upon the 

 spiral gastropod shell inhabited by the crab. 



The specimens secured by the ''Talisman" north of the Azores, 

 Lat. N. 42° 15', Long. 0.23° 37' and named P. ahyssorum by A. Milne 

 Edwards are deposited in the Paris Museum. Prof. Milne Edwards 

 and Prof. Bouvier subsequently designated these as subspecies of P. 

 pilosimanus. Milne Edwards' manuscript name was first published 

 by Prof. J. R. Henderson in his report on the "Challenger" collection 

 of Anomura. These latter specimens are deposited in the British 

 Museum. 



Distribution : This fascinating little hermit is the abysmal relative 

 of the familiar littoral hermit crabs despite its bathymetrical range, 

 which is from 625 to 1900 fms. It has been recorded from all of the 

 great ocean beds, with the exception of the Southern Ocean between 

 the Cape and Australia, by the ''Talisman," "Challenger," "Alba- 

 tross" and "Ara" expeditions. 



Material examined : Two males dressed in anemone, Epizoanthus 

 paguriphilus Verrill on shell Natica species indeterminable, dredged 

 in 1100 fms., off Miami, Florida, March 3, 1926, by the "Ara." 



Habits : Like its shallow water kin, Parapagurus pilosimanus ahys- 

 sorum (Henderson), selects a mollusk shell for its house, some of the 

 moUuskan genera thus represented being Pleurotoma, Trochus, Den- 

 talium, lanthina and Phos. The molluskan house is almost invariably 

 invested with an anemone, which is believed to exert a solvent action 

 on the shell. In the majority of the specimens I have examined and 

 also of those elsewhere recorded, the shell has become so wasted that 

 it is indeterminable, while in several instances the shell has entirely 

 disappeared and the anemone forms a saccular covering for the her- 

 mit. Nothing is really known of the why and wherefore of this curious 

 bit of commensalism beyond the obvious inference that the smaller 

 would-be devourers of the hermit's misshapen, soft body themselves 

 risk becoming victims of the voracious death-dealing tentacles of the 

 anemone, while the latter, member of a group of home-abiding, sessile 

 organisms has apparently satisfied some mysterious longing to travel, 

 and become a quaint, peripatetic philosopher of the abyss, who seem- 

 ingly has discovered that the economics of anemone existence in the 

 abyss are best served by this old-man-of-the-sea life. Two species of 

 deep-sea anemones, Epizoanthus paguriphilus Verrill and E. ahys- 

 sorum Verrill, have been recorded as forming the carcinocecum of 

 Parapagurus pilosimanus ahyssorum in the Atlantic ; of these, E. ahys- 

 sorum is the more abundant form. 



