266 SOMETHING ABOUT CRABS. 
which to pull himself along when he travels, carrying his 
house on his back; while the claws of the fifth or last pair 
are very diminutive, and yet have a beautiful structural 
relation, as they enable the animal to perform the small 
amount of movement needed by the body inside the shell. 
Behind all these limbs the body is entirely naked, hence the 
necessity of an empty sea-shell with which to cover it. On 
the extreme end of the naked body is an apparatus for tak- 
ing firm. hold of the little column in the upper part of the 
8 ell. 
There is a queer monkey-like deny in the looks of the 
Little Hermit. "We had in our aquarium one of rather large. 
size, and which occupied a shell of the required capacity. 
Of this specimen we were very proud. The shell on its 
upper part was ashen white, with a fine colony of Hydrac- 
tinia, like tiny sea-daisies. And mystic beings they were; 
for by that strange law of parthenogenesis, they were the 
great- grandparents of those huge and splendid creatures, 
the gorgeous Acalephs! We had also a little Hermit in à 
small Vassa obsoleta. And what about this young scape- 
grace, whom we soon almost wished obsolete? On he came, 
and climbed right up into this pretty parterre, and having 
secured himself with his grapnels on top of his neighbor’s 
house, most deliberately, now with the right claw, and now 
with the left, he pulled off my weesome pets, stowing 
them into his ugly mug with a movement so regular, that it 
seemed almost rythmical, and yet so cruelly comical, that it 
made me most laughably mad. 
But the Hermit grows, while the sea-shell which he occu- 
pies does not. Hence like many bipeds, he has his "first of 
May." So he goes house-hunting. This must be under- 
stood literally. He finds a shell. Willit do? First then 
is it really "to let." He will “inquire within." This he 
does, if not the most courteously, very feelingly. Satisfied 
on this point, the next question is, will the house suit. He 
turns it over, then turns it around. You see the weight of 
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