316 THE WORLD OF THE SEA. 
great care detached from it his friend the anemone, he then carried 
it to the new shell and deposited it on the top, actually giving the 
zoophyte several gentle taps with his great claw, as though he 
would say, “ There, my friend! be quick and attach yourself.” 
Mr. Lloyd, when constructing the Portland Road, often witnessed 
the same bond of union between the crustacean and its parasite 
the anemone. One hermit he watched, which could not leave its 
shell, although it had set its mind upon one in the neighbourhood, 
because it was not able to detach the anemone and remove it also. 
Another species of the crab has a companion in the mantle 
anemone, and we are told that when the crab dies, the anemone 
appears inconsolable and does not long survive his friend. 
It is also well known that one of the annelids, the double-lined 
Nereida, enters into a more intimate friendship with the hermit- 
crab, it even lives in the same shell and shares with the crustacean 
his lodging. The fishers of Weymouth who know this peculiarity, 
when they want the worm—which is an excellent bait—seek for it 
by breaking the shell tenanted by a hermit. 
A hermit has been known, when he could not suit himself with 
a shell, to make a home in a sponge. Another was discovered 
inhabiting a hole in a piece of pumice-stone. In the Zoological 
Gardens in Paris, in 1861, there was a hermit-crab who had actually 
taken up his abode inside a living anemone; he trailed it along 
with him wherever he chose. The anemone, when not very much 
shaken, extended out his tentacles, and appeared not in the least 
disconcerted at the strange occupancy of his digestive pouch. But 
this singular fact is productive of many questions, to which it is 
difficult even to suggest an answer. How did the anemone eat ? 
Was it fed by the ejectments of the crab? How came it to pass 
that the strong solvent fluids which the surface of the stomach of 
the zoophyte exudes, did not take effect on the unprotected body 
of the hermit ? . 
There is a little creature—a member of this tribe ot crustaceans 
—which selects a flat stone and lying down upon it, so protects its 
back; it keeps the stone in this position by means of two of its 
hindmost claws. The Dromia belong to the order Axnomoura, 
