86 PINNOTHERES, OR PEA-CRABS. 



the delicacy of all their members, their extreme inactivity, are 

 all circumstances which, on the other hand, render them more 

 or less unfit for a separate existence ; and yet some naturalists, 

 and amongst them the intelligent and accomplished Cuvier, 

 shut their eyes, as it were, to all these peculiarities, and pre- 

 tend to doubt the leading points of their history, and imagine 

 that it is only by accident we find these and other Crustacea 

 within the bivalve shells ! It is not because Pliny, in his 

 voluminous compilation, appears to be at variance with himself, 

 in his account of this animal, nor that because both ancients 

 and moderns have embellished the subject with various ima- 

 ginary conceits, that we are to discredit a circumstance so 

 often noticed by competent observers, and that in various 

 diflTerent species, and in both the Old and New World, and 

 which indeed it is so easy to be convinced of by due inves- 

 tigation. No doubt, other crustaceous animals are occasionally 

 found within bivalve shells, but this appears to be rare, and they 

 are obviously of species which have a separate existence; 

 not so the Pinnotheres, the females of which are never found 

 in any other situation, but within living shell-fish, and the 

 males but rarely, and this because they appear to go from shell 

 to shell in search of unimpregnated females, at the season of their 

 amours. To be convinced, let any person take a sweep with a 

 dredge on any bank of old muscles, modioli, or pinnae, where 

 the Pinnotheres have been before observed, and almost every 

 shell will be found to contain one full-grown female, some 

 two, and others three, independent of young ones and males, 

 which occasionally occur in common with the females, while not 

 a single stray individual will be seen. As the fishermen at 

 Cove often have recourse to those shell-fish for bait, I have 

 had a pint, and upwards, of the pea-crab brought to me out of 

 the muscles obtained in a few hauls of the dredge, and although 

 so very abundant, I have myself dredged in every direction 

 within the harbour, with a very fine net, and at all seasons, 

 and never procured a single specimen of the pea-crab, either 

 male or female, in this way, although crabs equally small 

 iPorcellance) have been abundantly captured. 



Asistotle, of all the ancients, is the only naturalist who has 

 given us any correct notions of these animals ; but as he pro- 

 bably did not investigate for himself, he seems to be in doubt, 

 whether the Pinnophylax, or guardian of the Pinna, was a 

 small shrimp, or a crab. Lib. V. cap. xv. A few lines further 



