II 



between these two claws they can tear every bit of food 

 they capture into little fragments and feed themselves with 

 it, literally " from hand to mouth." It is a very pretty 

 sight indeed to see the tiny Galathea Andrewsii, of 

 which I spoke just now, kept in the holes of a clinker, in a 

 soup plate filled with salt water, come out of their holes 

 when the water is stirred, and feed themselves with 

 particles of food utterly invisible to the unassisted eye, by 

 capturing some passing bit of food in their elegant little 

 claws and conveying it to their mouths, precisely as we 

 should do with a cherry or bit of biscuit. Crustaceans are 

 slow of movement, and may have to feed on things of a 

 much harder nature than the bait with which we fish for 

 them. This may explain the necessity for their having 

 such powerful hands, for their claws are but hands. But 

 then, as they are an exceedingly pugnacious class of 

 beings, it may be that the extraordinary power given to 

 their hands is needed for belligerent purposes. A crab 

 will fight anything. I have seen a captured crab seize 

 a captured picked dog-fish by the tail, and the dog-fish, 

 striking backwards, as is its wont, make its spines " click " 

 (ineffectually of course) on the back of the crab repeatedly ; 

 until the crab got a grip with its other claw on the dog- 

 fish's throat, and then the battle was over. Of course a 

 crab, size for size, is much harder and more powerful than 

 a lobster, I have seen a crab, in conflict with a lobster, 

 catch the latter over the forepart of the head, where its 

 shell is hardest, and crush it in by one effort. No lobster 

 could do this to a crab fairly its equal in size. And it 

 rather bears out my idea that the claws of these creatures 

 are weapons of war rather than means of providing them- 

 selves with food, that the moment any one of them receives 

 severe injury in a claw it "shoots" it, that is, it deliberately 



