254 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
The numerous family of the Paguri, or Hermit crabs, is also 
condemned by its formation to lead a parasitic and robber-life. 
The fore part of the body is indeed, as in other 
crabs, armed with claws and covered with a 
shield, but ends in a long soft tail provided 
with one or two small hooks. How then are 
the poor creatures to help themselves? The 
hind part is not formed for swimming, and its 
weight prevents them from running. Thus 
= nothing remains for them but to look about 
Diogenes Hermit them for some shelter, and this is afforded 
them by several conchiform shells, buccina, 
nerite, in which they so tenaciously insert their hooked tails, as if 
both were grown together. So long as they are young and feeble, 
they content themselves with such shells as they find empty on 
the strand, but when grown to maturity, they attack living 
specimens, seize with their sharp claws the snail, ere it can with- 
draw into its shell, and after devouring its flesh, creep without 
ceremony into the conquered dwelling, which fits them like a 
coat when they take a walk, and the mouth of which they close 
when at rest with their largest forceps, in the same manner as 
the original possessor used his operculum or lid. How re- 
markable that an animal should thus find in another creature 
belonging to a totally different class, the completion, as it 
were, of its being, and be indebted to it for the protecting cover 
which its own skin is unable to secrete! 
When the dwelling of the pagurus becomes inconveniently 
narrow, the remedy is easy, for appropriate sea-shells abound 
wherever hermit crabs exist. They are found on almost every 
coast, and every new scientific voyage makes us acquainted with 
new species. According to Quoy and Gaimard, they are par- 
ticularly numerous at the Ladrones, New Guinea, and Timor. 
The strand of the small island of Kewa, in Coupang Bay, was 
entirely covered with them. In the heat of the day they 
seek the shade of the bushes; but as soon as the cool of evening 
approaches, they come forth by thousands. Although they 
make all large snail-houses answer their purposes, they seem in 
this locality to prefer the large Sea Nerites. 
The famous East Indian Cocoa-nut Crab (Birgus latro), a 
kind of intermediate link between the short and long tailed 
