156 THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. 



of the shell by no means keeps pace with the growth 

 of the crab. There are times when you will see him 

 painfully squeezed up in an unyielding garment too 

 small for his body. Day after day the bondage 

 grows more intolerable ; the creature's limbs are para- 

 lysed, his whole life is an agony ; at length the crisis 

 arrives, and, with an extraordinary effort, he suddenly 

 breaks out of his prison and gains his liberty. Many 

 die in making this painful effort ; old crabs have had 

 the benefit of the experience two or three times re- 

 peated. In the case of the domestic crab, which inha- 

 bits the craggy coasts of Europe and the West Indies, 

 the change takes place between Christmas and 

 Easter. Until the new shell acquires its destined 

 hardness, the sole covering of the liberated crab is a 

 skin-like soddened parchment ; in this unprotected 

 condition it retires into the clefts of the rocks, or 

 buries itself under the sand, where it remains in a 

 state of absolute immobility. But all these ruses are 

 of little avail ; its enemies pursue it with an avidity 

 all the greater that the crab is known to be less 

 capable of resistance, and it is with difficulty that it 

 escapes their vengeance. 



The lobster changes its shell like the crab. Some 

 days before the period of renewal the animal seems 

 stupefied ; he settles down in a state of torpidity, and 

 the first sign of returning activity is when he throws 



