THE FISH OF BOUILLABAISSE 



consistency, to a piece of cork. The orifice we men- 

 tioned leads to a channel which ramifies in their 

 tissue and serves as a shelter to a hermit-crab, which 

 finds in this way the protection its soft abdomen needs. 

 They act, in fact, as a sort of travelling house for it. 

 This hermit-crab, which looks like a cray-fish, lodges 

 its abdomen within the sponge, and, although the 

 sponge is much larger than itself, it carries it about 

 and takes it along with it quite easily, the density of 

 the water allowing these aquatic creatures to perform 

 such tours de force. You can imagine nothing stranger 

 than the sight, in the tank to which we have taken 

 it, of the little hermit-crab armed with its nippers 

 carting about its enormous house, moving it without 

 the slightest difficulty, then, at the least sign of alarm, 

 stopping, and retreating completely into it, so that 

 the enemy can find nothing to attack but this quiet, 

 simple-looking house. 



Hermit-crabs of different sorts are to be found in 

 the thickets of the field of grass-wrack; there they 

 take the place of the insects which infest our shrubs, 

 quite as many in numbers and just as industrious. 

 While some find shelter in the large sponges, others 

 are content with a simple shell. Others, again, fasten 

 themselves upon a still more remarkable covering; 

 they associate with the sea anemones with stinging 

 tentacles, clothe themselves with them for protection, 

 and so move about, bearing their companions with 

 them like the blind man of the fable carrying the 

 paralytic. 



Here and there, cuttlefish, still full of life, extend 

 and twist about their long, arm-like tentacles, clinging 

 with them to anything they can get hold of, squirting 

 out black liquid whenever they are touched. Besides 

 the smell of the sea which all these creatures have, 

 they give out a musk-like odour, stronger in a certain 

 species, which is consequently known as the musk- 

 poulp. 



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