he leaves his house, retires to the ionehest 

 corner he can find, puts the tail in a 

 crack and sits, telling his beads appar- 

 ently, till all is complete. 



When he is merely startled or annoyed, 

 he retires into his home, as beforesaid. 

 If he wishes to change that house, how 

 carefully he adjusts the new ! how nicely 

 he poises himself over it, and how dex- 

 terously he whips that precious tail into 

 it ! in great fear of a nip from the enemy. 

 But if the water becomes foul or too 

 salt, or his grievances from any cause 

 become unbearable, — then he comes bod- 

 ily forth, spreads his tail to the public 

 gaze, and prepares to die. He is barom- 

 eter as well as clown, — comedy and 

 pathos united, as usual, — and his pro- 

 test cannot be disregarded. "Mercy !" 

 says somebody, "the hermit crab is out 

 of his shell !" and "there's racing and 

 chasing on Cannobie Lee," not to mention 

 Netherby Hall, until his wrongs are 

 righted. 



At Coffin's Beach, and sometimes in 

 the canal, are found very large hermits 

 in big natica-shells overgrown with 

 polyps, so that they look like round caps 

 of pink fur, — very tempting but not desir- 

 able, — for you want to be able to call the 

 roll of your animals, and you can't do 

 that with polyps. They may die "unbe- 

 knownst," and foul the water, whereas 

 all impurities should be removed at once. 

 Sea-urchins, barnacles, mussels and so on 

 are undesirable for this reason. We 

 dipped up a little glass eel once, and 

 did not know we had him at first. When 

 we did know it, we could never have 

 kept track of him but for his hard little 

 black eyes. He was about two inches 

 long and transparent as the clearest glass, 

 so that the situation, shape and size of his 

 tiny organs could be plainly seen. 



We delighted to prowl about the rocks 

 at low tide and look for "animals," or 

 to accompany some youth in a boat on a 

 lobster-spearing cruise. The puny 

 nurslings we see now are barely a third 

 of the size of the big fellows we used to 

 look down on and hook up with a gaff. 

 It was from a boat we saw two monster 



anemones, white and orange, blooming 

 at the base of a rock six feet below low 

 water mark. They were the biggest we 

 ever saw, eight inches or more, and 

 twice too large for our tanks. We could 

 always find numbers of a suitable size in 

 the sea weed pools, or out of them, for 

 that matter, — sometimes in big beds ; 

 pink, orange, white and brown, but 

 nobody would have a brown one. We 

 haunted these low pools, and the higher 

 ones in the bare rock where we could lie 

 at full length with noses almost in the 

 water, and admire the rich colors of the 

 rock, — due to some imperceptible growth, 

 — the rough pink incrustations, the tiny 

 dark blue mussels, purple moss, and the 

 barnacles opening to let out a feathery 

 hand which opened, closed and withdrew, 

 the crack closing behind it, all at regular 

 intervals like a pulse. 



One day as we came along a shingly 

 beach with a tiny terrace descending into 

 a chain of sandy pools lower than the 

 enclosing tract of weed-grown boulders 

 outside, we found these pools full of a 

 struggling mass of creatures the like of 

 which we had never seen before. Long, 

 thin, flat "worms," we called them, some 

 one foot long, some three, but uniform 

 otherwise, the width of a finger, — of a 

 dark color but fringed on each edge with 

 short wavy tentacles of bright changing 

 peacock blue and green. Appalled by 

 this unwonted sight, we inspected them 

 with gravity, and went home to supper. 

 The knots were too dense, and the pools 

 too full to admit of independent motion ; 

 and though we came back next tide, 

 finding, I believe, a straggler or two, we 

 still failed to note the manner of swim- 

 ming. It seems probable, however, that it 

 resembled that of some tiny annelids of 

 similar form but dull color which we had 

 in the tanks some years later. When 

 they swam, they formed in spirals, so 

 that their motion was to plain swimming 

 as waltzing is to walking. These little 

 dingy annelids we found repeatedly, but 

 the big gorgeous ones never again, 

 though we ranged these beaches contin- 

 ually. 



Helen Mansfield. 



103 



