
13 
disease. He actually had photographs of the germs of diphtheria 
being attacked by the wonderful protective germs that swarm in 
the blood. The diphtheria germs are paralysed by one strange 
organism which bursts among the armies of disease just like a 
bombshell, and while the germs are thus paralysed the white 
corpuscles surround them, swallow them, and finally eject their 
flinty skeletons. It is a daily battle fought out in an arena which 
a pin’s point would destroy. 
After showing pictures of the wonderful provisions on the 
tongues, the antenne, and other parts of insects, the intricate 
arrangements which can only be seen when magnified several 
thousand times, Dr. Spitta was led to exclaim: “‘ How any human 
being can suppose that these wonderful provisions only ‘ growed,’ 
like Topsy, without a divine designer to plan such delicate adjust- 
ment, is more than I can understand.” 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY st, 1906. 

Crabs and Dobsters. 
BY 
Rev. THEODORE WOOD, M.A., F.E.S., 
Illustrated with Drawings. 

HE subject which Mr Wood chose was ‘‘ Crabs and Lobsters,” 
and it was quite a new and delightful world of information 
that he opened out for those who know but little about these 
creatures of claws and pincers. To the average man, of course, 
crabs and lobsters are merely toothsome items in a menu, but Mr 
Wood made it clear that the study of their physical construction 
and of their habits and ways is fraught with the keenest of interest, 
even to the point of fascination. 
One of the strangest things the members learned was that 
crabs and lobsters do not grow as we do,~-bit by bit every day, 
but that they grow by fits and starts. When they do grow, their 
growth is concentrated into a period of about thirty-six hours. 
It is at these periods that the crab sheds his shell. Mr Wood did 
not think that crabs and lobsters have any sense of pain as we 
know it. In illustration of this he told a delightful story about a 
number of various-sized crabs who were put together in a tank. 
