396 
GAMMARIDxE. 
days ; and Desmars, who published a long note upon 
the subject (Melanges d’Hist. Nat. 1762, tom. i. 
p. 217), states that the young are hatched, and escape 
from the pouch-like scales attached to the base of the 
legs of the females on the seventh day, after which the 
latter immediately cast their skins. The young have 
the curious habit of devouring their own excrement. 
Geoffroy has also observed that the young take shelter 
between the legs of their parents, in order to escape 
danger ; and we have found young ones one-tenth of an 
inch long in this position. 
Rosel states that these animals feed upon vegetable 
matter ; but De Geer denies this, and asserts that they 
are truly carnivorous, eating flesh and filth whenever they 
can get it, like cray-fish, as well as their dead com- 
panions, leaving not a particle unconsumed ; on giving 
them dead flies they immediately crowded around and 
devoured them, but were never observed to attack living 
insects. It is not improbable, however, that like some 
marine species, they will, in default of animal matter, 
feed upon vegetables, perhaps in a decaying state. They 
shed their skins in the same manner as cray-fish. One 
moulted on the 3rd September, whilst under De Geer’s 
observation, the operation being almost instantaneous, 
and the cast skin closing up so as exactly to resemble 
the insect itself ; but, according to our own observation, 
it is slowly and quietly performed, the skin splitting 
between the head and first segment of the body, and 
between the body and the coxae of the first three or 
four pairs of legs as shown in the vignette at p. 360. 
When the skin is sloughed off, the head-covering, though 
still attached to it, generally falls in an inverted 
position, as if thrown forwards. The animals die very 
soon if taken out of their native element. 
