MTJE^NIDJE. 405 



with rage, dart forward to the attack : furious, and with 

 open mouth, the assault is commenced, but without 

 making any impression upon the well-protected can- 

 cer ; in vain she assails him with all the force of her 

 vindictive jaws ; the strongest teeth must weary to no 

 purpose against his, rigid shell; repelled, as if from 

 the surface of a rough stone, their utmost efforts fail, and 

 by the impetuosity of the bite are broken off short and 

 loosened in the sockets. Though foiled in the attempt, 

 the mursena, stiU meditating mischief, and thirsting for 

 revenge, remains motionless, regardless of peril or un- 

 conscious of her impending fate, tUl the active crab, ad- 

 vancing an enormous claw, seizes her body, and gradually 

 tightening his grasp, holds the hapless fish as in an iron 

 vice. Now, every effort to escape is but a prelude to 

 further suffering; constrained by superior force, con- 

 vulsed by pain, and pinioned to the spot, she twists and 

 writhes in hopeless anguish, and seeks, like her victim the 

 poor cuttle, by bending her own body round that of her 

 tormentor, to crush him to death; and with no better 

 success ; for at every fresh struggle the poiats and pro- 

 minences of the unyielding shell inflict more bruises and 

 wounds, hastening the denouement. Worn out by pain 

 and fatigue, she succumbs at last, and dies covered by a 

 number of unsightly gashes of her own procuring : ' as 

 the savage pard,' says Oppian, ' surrounded and at bay, 

 lashed into fary by the shouts of foes, rushes upon some 

 veteran huntsman skilled in the slaughter of wild beasts, 

 and, with open mouth, presents her throat as a sheath to 

 the murderous steel ; so, carried away by blind rage, the 

 mursena rushes headlong on destruction.' Oppian finds 

 another comparison for the warfare carried on between 

 these two enemies, in that which subsists, he says, be- 

 tween the porcupine and the serpent : the scene selected 

 for whose strife is the recess of a deep forest, where no 

 sooner does the prickly quadruped discern the gliding foe. 



