THE HERMIT-CRAB. 47 



of Crustacea, and wears an expression of conscious yet 

 defiant' theft, as if he knew the rightful owner of the shell, 

 or his relatives, were coming every moment to recover it, 

 and he, for his part, very much wished they might get it. 

 All the fore part of Pagurus, including his claws, is defended 

 by the solid armour of crabs. But his hind parts are soft, 

 covered only by a delicate membrane, in which the ana- 

 tomist, however, detects shell-plates in a rudimentary con- 

 dition. Now a gentleman so extremely pugnacious, troubled 

 with so tender a back and continuation, would fare ill in 

 this combative world, had he not some means of redressing 

 the Avrong done him at birth ; accordingly he selects an 

 empty shell of convenient size, into which he pops his tender 

 tail, fastening on by the hooks on each side of his tail, and 

 having thus secured his rear, he scuttles over the sea-bed, 

 a grotesque but philosophic marauder. You ask how 

 it is that this tendency to inhabit the shells of molluscs 

 became organised in the hermit-crab ? Either we must sup- 

 pose that the crab was originally so created, — designed with 

 the express view of inhabiting shells, to which end his struc- 

 ture was arranged ; or — and this I think the more reason- 

 able supposition — that the hermit-crab originally was fur- 

 nished with shell-plates for the hinder part of his body, but 

 that these have now become rudimentary in consequence of 

 the animal's practice of inhabiting other shells, — a practice 

 originally resorted to, perhaps, as a refuge from more powerful 

 enemies, and now become an organised tendency in the species. 

 Be this as it may, the hermit-crab will not live long out 

 of an appropriated shell ; and very ludicrous was the scene 



