558 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



It is almost impossible to describe the crab's 

 manner of vaulting into its shell. Its humour can only 

 be appreciated by one who has seen it and can contrast 

 the animal's previous nervous anxiety (Taylor uses the 

 apt simile " A bather whose clothes have been stolen!") 

 with its sleek impudence on safely reaching the desired 

 covering. 



The crab is extremely difficult to remove from its 

 shell. Even if it is prevented from using the telson and 

 uropods it will hold on quite effectually by flexing its 

 abdomen strongly and elevating itself by its last two 

 pereiopods against the roof of the aperture. The best 

 way of getting it out of the shell is to break away the 

 opening till the front of the animal is exposed, and then 

 to insert a seeker and gently tickle the abdomen. The 

 crab usually makes a rapid egress without rendering 

 further resource to the bone-forceps necessary. Any 

 other mode of removing it, apart from entirely breaking 

 up the shell, is useless and generally ends in the parting 

 of abdomen from thorax. Nevertheless their fellow 

 hermits are sometimes able to do what man finds beyond 

 his powers. The whole battle seems to lie in a sudden 

 and unexpected onslaught, for if the crab has any 

 suspicion of foul play it will not venture outside the 

 inner whorls of its house ; no further, in fact, than 

 where it can still retain a firm hold. 



In spite of the cumbersome shell the hermit crab 

 is very nimble in its actions. I have seen individuals 

 climbing steep faces of rock — the shell pendant behind 

 them — which would have presented difficulty to a less 

 severely handicapped crustacean. 



The inside of the shell is kept aerated by means of 

 the current of water from the branchial chamber, aided 

 by the pleopods which lazily flap to and fro while the 



