THE WALKS ABROAD OF 



Kene* had been reflecting for a few minutes, and now 

 made up his mind to speak. 



" I was thinking Ah ! but you know I am only a 

 stupid fellow, and know nothing of these things. You 

 won't laugh at me ? " 



" Speak out, and you Avill see." 



" Very well. Uncle Bob explained to us the other 

 day the mode of growth of animals of everybody, in 

 fact, But how do the Crustacea, as you call them, all 

 this series of creatures with rigid carapace, clothed as 

 it were in armour, manage about this. It strikes me 

 they must feel remarkably uncomfortable when their 

 costume becomes too small for them." 



"And it so happens that these armour-bearers do 

 not grow in the same manner as other animals. The 

 metamorphoses of insects with their unyielding inte- 

 guments, and of the crustaceans with their rigid cara- 

 paces, are in fact a peculiar mode of growth : they grow 

 by stages. 



" Thus the lobster before it becomes large enough 

 to grace our tables, and to undergo the posthumous 

 honour of la mayonnaise, has had to pass through about 

 a score of moults. This is the reason why you have 

 never met with a really infant lobster. Their appear- 

 ance quite changes as they grow up ; indeed, this 

 occurs to so great an extent, that up to the fourth 

 moult they swim by whirling about, and they are 

 thirty or forty days old when they first fall to the 



