A CEITSTACEOUS DIOGENES. 101 



and trees in the shape of small rocks and sea-weeds, 

 much to their danger. 



I once possessed a Hermit-Crab, whose voracious 

 movements afforded considerable amusement to my- 

 self and my friends. My Diogenes or, as the 

 Cockney news-boys used to pronounce the now 

 extinct comic periodical, Dodgenes on a certain oc- 

 casion had climbed up a segmentally cut frond of 

 Irish Moss. On reaching the topmost point, his 

 weight became too great for the weed to bear ; so, 

 finding he was losing his equilibrium, in great 

 alarm he made a clutch at the first object that stood 

 near, in order to save him from falling. 



A mussel was moored hard by, to the side of the 

 vase by means of its silken byssus threads, and upon 

 this friendly bivalve the Pagurus leaped by aid of his 

 long taper legs. Unluckily the shell of the Mytilus 

 was open, and the crab unwittingly thrusting his toe 

 within the aperture, the intruding object was of 

 course instantly gripped by the mollusc. This ac- 

 cident put him in a terrible fright. His gestures 

 were most excited, and no wonder. Let the reader 

 fancy himself hanging on to a window sill, at a height 

 say of twenty feet from the ground, with the sash- 

 frame fixed on his hand, and a huge iron foot-bath, 

 or some such object, attached to the lower part of 

 his body, and he will have a tolerably correct idea of 

 the painful position of our crustacean friend. 



After curling and uncurling his tail, and trying 



