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CHAPTER 2033s 
THE HERMIT-CRAB. 
THE Hermit, or Soldier Crab, is perhaps the oddest and most 
curious of the crustaceans which inhabit the sea shore. It differs 
from the rest of the crustacean tribe in this, that only its head and 
breast are covered with a thick, calcareous crust, the rest of its 
body being without protection, and therefore readily eaten by its 
voracious brethren. But instinct has not deserted the hermit. 
Fully aware of his vulnerable point, he prudently takes shelter in 
some empty and deserted shell, whose shape somewhat approaches 
what his own would have been, had Nature granted him such a 
protection. But the hermit is by no means disposed to spend much 
time in searching for a cast-off shell; if there happen not to be 
one ready for his use, he attacks the first living shell-fish whose 
coveted shell he fancies will serve his turn. Killing the mollusk he 
eats the luckless tenant and then inhabits his house. At the 
feeding or breeding times, the hermit extends his great claws out 
of the orifice of the shell, as the illustration we append will show. 
When the crab would change his place, he seizes with his claws the 
nearest object, and then drags the shell forward; by this mode of 
progression the undefended parts are never exposed. 
When the tide has gone out, all over the shore you may see 
a great number of shells of all shapes and sizes moving here and 
there with a much more rapid motion than mollusks are capable 
of. If you touch them, they abruptly stop, and you discover that 
the inhabitant of the shell is not a mollusk, but a hermit-crab. 
This habit of the creature of occupying a cell so nearly fitted 
to his own size, has procured for him his names; for the hermit 
occupies but a hole in a rock, and the soldier as he stands in his 
sentry-box well nigh entirely fills it. 
When the crab grows so that the shell becomes rather uncom- 
fortably tight, he leaves its friendly protection and goes upon an 
