THE 
ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 179.] 
THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
On Monday next the Council of the 
Entomological Society of London will 
meet to discuss the very important 
questions, Shall the Society remove? 
Whither ? and "When ? 
Any person who has studied the pro- 
ceedings of the Hermit Crab is aware 
that the peculiar reluctance to change 
a habitation, to which human beings 
are often subject, is no indication of 
superior intellect. The fondness for 
one’s habitation is an animal instinct, 
and clearly has descended to us from 
our ancestors by hereditary transmis- 
sion. No doubt we were once Hermit 
Crabs; we have increased in size since 
then, in form and in texture. Have 
we increased in wisdom ? 
The Hermit Crab, as those of our 
readers who study marine aquariums 
are well aware, has its posterior ex- 
tremities unprotected by the hard 
covering which we find in the true 
crabs and lobsters; it therefore in- 
sinuates its tail into some empty shell, 
and is thus protected from injury to its 
soft, fleshy posterior portion. 
Hermit Crabs, like Scientific So- 
cieties, increase in size in the course 
of time: now empty shells resemble 
[Price Id . 
London houses in one respect — their 
walls are not elastic, and they do not 
grow. 
Any senior wrangler can inform us 
that if a body which is constantly 
increasing in size be placed inside a 
body which does not increase in size 
the interior body will eventually fill 
the whole of the exterior body, and 
will either effect its disruption, or 
if the exterior body be hard and 
the interior boc[y soft, the latter will 
be squeezed, and as this squeezing 
will continue to increase, the in- 
terior body of a sentient animal will 
suffer at first inconvenience, then pain, 
then torture, and ultimately the most 
excruciating agony. 
All suffering is beneficent, and be- 
fore the climax is reached the Hermit 
Crab will be driven by the painful 
sensations that pervade its frame to 
seek a more roomy habitation ; it 
crawls, therefore, along the line of 
empty shells left by the last wave, 
and when it finds a suitable-looking 
shell slips its tail into it to try if it 
will fit; when at last it meets with a 
suitable shell it abandons the old one 
and takes off with the newly-selected 
domicile. 
In the present position of affairs 
at Bedford Row, the Entomological 
2 A 
SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1860 
