1905. ] BEARING ACTINIANS IN THEIR CLAWS. 497 
are slender and feeble—ill-suited for defence, but at the same 
time mobile and well adapted to wield the anemones they carry ; 
and, if the crab be threatened, it will stretch out its arms towards 
the aggressor, as though it would ward him off with the dis- 
agreeable obstacles it thus presents to his attack. Certainly the 
fingers cannot be used to take food unless the anemone be first 
dropped ; but, on the other hand, the tentacles of the latter are 
directed outwards, away from the mouth of the evab. The third 
maxillipeds are mobile, with the proximal joints rather slender 
and the last three stout, and are fringed with long hairs. 
Possibly they are used to catch small organisms for food in much 
the same way as those of the China Crabs (Porcellanide), which 
part with their chelipeds so readily when they are attacked, 
since they do not use them for taking food. 
‘Tn any case we seem to have here an interesting example of 
the use of an implement by.an animal which, however intelligent, 
has at least a very differently organised nervous system from the 
Vertebrata. It should be noted that the case is different from 
that of a Spider-crab, which sticks pieces of seaweed on its back 
and enjoys passively the concealment gotten thereby. For the 
Melia carries the anemone in its cheliped—the chief grasping- 
organ of the animal, corresponding to the hand of a primate or 
the trunk of an elephant—and, whatever its use, it cannot be 
a means of passive concealment, to which its size is wholly 
inadequate.” 
These two accounts leave much to be desired ere we can be said 
to have a complete acquaintance with the living relationships 
between Jelia and its associated actinians, and thew peculiarities 
of habits and reactions. 
A short time ago Miss M. J. Rathburn, of the United States 
National Museum, forwarded me for identification the actinians 
held in the claws of a specimen of Melia. The crab had been col- 
lected at Hilo Bay, Hawaiian Islands, by Prof. Henshaw, and the 
actinian proved to belong toa species of Bunodeopsis, a genus well 
known as occurring in the Mediterranean and the West Indies. 
During a recent visit by the author to the Hawaiian Islands, 
under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution, for the purpose of 
studying the living corals, an effort was also made to procure 
other specimens of J/elia and its commensal actinians. On the 
second day’s collecting over the reef-flats at Waikiki Beach, near 
Honolulu, a single crab carrying actinians (text-fig. 74, p. 498) 
was obtained, and another a few days later. During all the sub- 
sequent collecting, extending over three months, at various points 
of the islands, no other Melias were seen, so that evidently the 
species is not so common in Hawaiian waters as in the regions 
visited by Mébius and Borradaile. 
Both specimens of Melia were found on the dead under surface 
of coral blocks, not wandering among the branches of the living 
coral as in Borradaile’s experience. Further, Prof. Henshaw, 
who has on rare occasions collected the crab at Hilo Bay, also 
