FREE MESSMATES. 25 



LjTiopes, and other crustaceans often establish them- 

 selves. The paguri are not messmates of an ordinary 

 kind, for they inhabit only a deserted shell. They are 

 spread over all seas. They are found in the Mediter- 

 ranean, the Northern Sea, on the coasts of the Pacific, of 

 New Zealand, and of the East Indian islands: thirty 

 species and even more have been inserted in the catalogue 

 of crustaceans. 



Natui-alists have given the name of Cenohitas to some 

 pagurians inhabiting the seas of warmer latitudes ; these 

 have an abdomen like the pagurus, antennae like the 

 Birr/us, and hke it they inhabit shells. The Cenohita 

 Diogenes is a species found in the Antilles. 



Other pagurians, the Birgi, grow very large, and con- 

 ceal their abdomen no longer in a shell, but in the 

 crevices of the rocks, as lobsters do at the moulting time, 

 to protect their body while deprived of their defensive 

 armour. In the East Indies they remain on land, and 

 even cHmb into trees. They have so much strength in 

 their pincers, that Eumphius relates of one of these 

 crustaceans, that, while stretched on a branch of a tree, 

 it raised a goat by the ears. 



Side by side with the pagurians which instal them- 

 selves in a shell with thick and completely opaque walls, 

 we recognize crustaceans of the order of amphipods, 

 the Phronimx, which choose for themselve^not an aban- 

 doned hovel, but a veritable crystal palace, and take 

 possession of it without inquiring whether or no it is 

 inhabited. The dayhght penetrates through the walls of 

 then- dwellings, and it can scarcely be discerned in 

 the water whether or no their body is protected by a 

 covering. They usually take the dwelling of a Salpa, a 



