50 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



one. The terrors of the last two Jays have been too mnch 

 for his nerves : one must almost question his perfect sanity ; 

 he is not only beside his shell, but beside himself The 

 approach of C. K. throws him into a trepidation, which 

 expresses itself in the most grotesque efforts at escape." 



I tried a new experiment. Throwing a good-sized whelk 

 into the vase, I waited to see Kean devour the whelk in 

 order to appropriate his shell ; for the house he last stole, 

 though better than the previous houses, by no means suited 

 him. Mr Bell, in his History of British Crustacea, conjec- 

 tures that the hermit-crab often eats the mollusc in whose 

 shell he is found— a conjecture adopted by subsequent 

 writers, although Mr Bell owns that he never witnessed the 

 fact. My observation flatly contradicted the conjecture. 

 Kean clutched the shell at once, and poked in his interroga- 

 tory claw, which, touching the operoidum of the whelk, 

 made that animal withdraw and leave an empty space, into 

 which Kean popped his tail. In a few minutes the whelk, 

 tired of this confinement in his own house, and all alarm 

 being over, began to protrude himself, and in doing so gently 

 pushed C. K. before him. In vain did the intmder, feeling 

 himself slipping, chng fiercely to the shell ; with slow but 

 irresistible pressure the mollusc ejected him. This was 

 repeated several times, till at length C. K. gave up in despair, 

 and contented himself witli his former shell. Thus, instead 

 of eating the whelk (which, I may remark in passing, the 

 crab never does, even in captivity, where food is scanty), 

 he had not even the means of getting him out of his shell. 



