392 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
possibility that they can bend the frond to serve their own wants. 
I may state that I have used the word nest of Lima hians only as 
a convenient word for nest-like structure. 
I have examined hundreds of their nests, and never found more 
than one of these animals, old or young, in the same nest :—that 
is to say, if the nests were perfect ; for two or three might readily 
get, by accident, into a torn or open nest. Lima hians, like most 
of her kind, sends adrift her thousands of ova to care for them- 
selves in the open sea; and by the time they have obtained the 
‘size of little more than the quarter of an inch they build for them- 
selves, 
On Cancer pagurus (Linn.). 
[Read 3lst March, 1896.] 
Ir is not unusual to find crabs parti-coloured, and resembling in 
some degree the materials among which they live, and there can 
be little doubt that this characteristic may afford them protection 
from their enemies. These markings often assume curious forms, 
and, with a little exercise of the imaginative faculty, marvellous 
likenesses of animated nature may be discovered. Some of the 
members of the Society may remember a paper read by the late 
Robert Gray, long its Secretary, describing the Shore Crab, 
Carcinas menas, Leach, as having the likeness of a balloon on 
the carapace, with a man in the car and a flag at each side. The 
markings represented the balloon, car, flags, and man so closely 
that some doubted if nature ever so imitated art in detail. 
Cancer pagurus, Linn., the common edible crab, the subject of the 
present short note, has nothing quite so remarkable about it. 
Bell, in his “ History of the British Stalk-eyed Crustacea” (page 
60), in referring to the species, says, ‘‘The colour above [is] 
reddish brown ; in younger individuals with a purplish tint, the 
legs more red, the claws black.” The singularity of the specimen 
now exhibited is that the carapace is white all over, together with 
ee 
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