164 A HISTORY OF RECENT CRUSTACEA 



creatures may be restrained under the influence of the 

 tender passion, for at the Hamburg Aquarium the late Mr. 

 W. A. Lloyd observed the male Eupagurus Bernhwrdus, 

 in the spring of the year, ' take hold of the shell in which a 

 female was contained, and carry her about for weeks 

 together, grasping the thin edges of the shell, and when 

 the female was fed, the male did uot take away the food as 

 he would if a male one fed in his vicinity.' Aristotle 

 supposed that the Pagurids were generated out of earth and 

 mud, and Gesner argues from this that he can never have 

 - taken a gravid female out of her shell, or he would have 

 been disabused of his opinion by seeing the bunches of 

 eggs on the appendages of the pleon. Stalio says that the 

 mother takes care to discharge the young ones in some 

 place where tbey will have a good chance of finding shells 

 appropriate to their size. According to Mr. Spence Bate 

 it is not necessary for the mother to leave her shell in 

 order to release the young, for when they issue from the 

 egg they are ejected by the current of water that passes 

 outward during the process of respiration. He reports 

 that he had himself seen them thus ejected through the 

 branchial passage under the wing of the carapace. The 

 same writer quotes an interesting experience on the part 

 of Mr. Gurney, who found in a capsule of Bucdnum eggs a 

 little whelk-shell, not larger than No. 5 shot, occupied by 

 a young Hermit-crab about an eighth of an inch long, and 

 in another capsule a second Hermit-crab of similar size, 

 but not ensconced in a shell. Hence it appears that the 

 instinct of seeking an extraneous covering is developed at 

 a very early age. In the earliest stages of life the Pagurids 

 are symmetrical and therefore unsuited to the occupation 

 of a spiral shell. It may not be possible absolutely to 

 prove that in their later phases they have gradually 

 acquired the formation that suits them to so peculiar a 

 lodging, but it may at least be said that no other explana- 

 tion looks equally probable. 



The genus Anapagurus has been already referred to as 

 containing some British species. This genns and two others 

 form a group by themselves, distinguished from Eupagurus 



