FREE MESSMATES. 7 



when both of them are immersed in the ooze, it carries 

 on a fishery sufficiently abundant to enable it to share 

 the spoil with others. This same angler lives in the 

 northern seas, and there it harbours an amphipod crus- 

 tacean, which until lately has escaped the vigilance of 

 carcinologists. We shall speak of it further on. 



Dr. Collingwood saw a sea anemone in the Chinese 

 Sea, which was not less than two feet in diameter, and 

 in the interior of which lodges a very frisky little fish, 

 the name of which he could not tell. 



Lieut, de Crispigny has observed a sea anemone 

 (Actinia crassicornis) living on good terms with a 

 malacopterygian fish, the Premnas biaculeatus. This 

 fish penetrates into the interior of the anemone ; the 

 tentacles close round it, and it lives thus for a consider- 

 able time enclosed as in a living tomb. Mons. de 

 Crispigny has kept these animals alive for more than a 

 year, in order to make careful observations on them. A 

 fish known by the name of Oxybeles lumbricoides has been 

 also found in the Indian Seas, which modestly takes up 

 his quarters in a star-fish (Asterias discoida). Another 

 case of commensalism has been made known to us by 

 Professor Bernhardt of Copenhagen. A siluroid of Brazil, 

 of the genus Platystoma, a skilful fisherman, thanks to 

 his numerous barbules, lodges in the cavity of his mouth 

 some very small fishes, which were for a long time con- 

 sidered as young Biluroids; it was supposed that the 

 mother brought her progeny to maturity in the cavity 

 of the mouth, as marsupials do in the abdominal pouch, 

 or as some other fishes do. These messmates are per- 

 fectly developed and adult, but instead of living on the 

 produce of their own labour, they prefer to instal them- 



