894 Something about Crabs. 
Diogenes, who made his home in a tub, or, as others will have it, 
in a cracked amphora, and is it to be wondered that while natural- 
ists were ransacking all ancient history and mythology for names, 
that the old philosopher should have to furnish a cognomen for 
some of these, his prototypes? A hermit crab needs protection for 
the hinder part of his body, for this is covered with a delicate 
cuticle and could be easily injured. The desired security is sought 
by inserting this “tail” in the cast-off shell of some univalve 
mollusc, the curl of the tail and the rudimentary limbs with which 
it is provided serving to hold the shell tight, and thus protected 
the hermit wanders over the bottom or along the beach safe from 
almost anyenemy. The little hermits have small houses; the large 
ones have their larger cells into which they can retire for protection, 
and, who can say, not for meditation and prayer? 
The house-hunting adventures of the hermits have been so fre- 
quently described that a repetition is useless. When the body 
grows too large for the old home a new shell is sought, its dimen- 
sions are carefully measured by claws and antenne, and, if it be 
thought suitable, moving takes but an instant of time, and the 
hermit is in a new and larger home. All hermits, however, are 
not troubled with this frequent recurrence of moving day, for they 
have living homes, the growth of which is sufficient to accommodate 
their usual increase in size. They start in life with a borrowed 
shell, just as do their more familiar cousins of the shore, but a sea 
anemone helps them later. This latter animal becomes attached to 
the shell, feeds upon the crumbs dropped from the hermit’s table, 
and grows as he grows. Soon the shell is covered, and then the 
anemone begins to spread and thus builds a tube for the crab. It 
goes further, for it absorbs the old shell, and with its own body 
gives all the protection which the crab needs. Thus the strange 
partnership goes on ; the crab providing food—at least in part—the 
anemone furnishing the protection. In this respect the latter is far 
more efficient than the first glance at its soft and skeletonless body 
would indicate, for it is provided with stinging organs of no mean 
order, and many a fish is deterred from swallowing crab and all by 
the nettling it receives from this soft-bodied flower of the sea. A 
few years ago but a few of these cases of association of hermit crab 
and sea anemone were known, but more lately the deep-sea : 
ings have furnished numerous examples. 
