EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 527 



and the Sea-Anemone in return acting as a defence and warning-post, and 

 possibly also as a decoy, for the benefit of the Crab. But, though the 

 mutual advantage of the association is plain enough, the absolute and 

 essential necessity of it is not so plainly seen, and it is reasonable to 

 imagine that when in the course of growth the Hermit-Crab has to seek 

 a new and larger shell, the partnership with the Sea-Anemone can be 

 dissolved by simple withdrawal, without dangerously affecting the life of 

 either individual — at any rate until such time as each can find a new 

 partner of suitable size. In other words, there is no adaptation of either 

 animal to the other, and each seems capable of existing apart from the 

 other. In the present case there is no shell to act as introduction to and 

 bond between the two animals; and the Sea-Anemone, which is a colonial 

 form with a spreading ccenosarc, merely forms a sheet, which the Crab 

 simply tucks under its telsou by one end and pulls over its back by the 

 other end — the polyps seeming to have no power of adhesion, and to depend 

 on the Crab for a fast hold. 



" The nearest approach to this state of affairs is found in Parapagurus 

 pilosimanus, which, when full-grown, lives in a cavity hollowed out of the 

 coeuosarc of a colony of a large species of Epizoanthus. But in this case 

 the individual Hermit-Crab and Sea-Anemone start their partnership with 

 an empty mollusc-shell, which in course of time, as the occupants increase 

 in size, becomes absorbed, so that at last the Crab is entirely dependent 

 on the polyp-colony for the protection of its soft abdomen. But even here, 

 though the association seems to have become much more intimate and 

 permanent, there seems to be no essential adaptation of either animal to 

 the other, nor does it appear to be beyond the bounds of possibility that 

 each might exist — though its existence might not be so complete and 

 secure — apart from the other. 



" In the case of the new form of Hermit-Crab, now described, there is 

 no evidence of the intervention of a shell, or other adventitious support, 

 at any stage. Captain Anderson dredged 205 specimens, of both sexes 

 and all ages, and in every observable instance the parent polyp of the 

 protective colony appears to have settled on the hinder end of the abdomen 

 of the Crab, and to have gradually spread by budding as the latter increased 

 in size ; so that the intimate and immediate connection between the two 

 animals appears to be, from the first, a necessary one. In other words, 

 the peculiar interest of the case is that the two animals seem to have become 

 directly adapted to one another, and to be incapable of a separate and 

 independent existence." 



In August last there was published at St. Petersburg the first number 

 of the ' International Review of Fisheries and Fishculture,' of which the 



