LETTERS FROM ALABAMA* 
21 
can suit himself ; and that it is highly amusing, 
as, I am sure it must he, to watch his manoeuvres 
on such occasions. As he has no power of enlarging 
his usurped tenement, as its original inhabitant 
had, it becomes in the course of' time too strait 
for him ;■ he finds himself pinched for room, and 
looks about as before for one more suitable* He 
is too wide awake, however, to desert the old one, 
until he finds a better ; he therefore drags it about 
with him, now slipping out of it to try another, 
then rejecting this and resuming the former, till he 
perceives a more promising one* At length he 
finds one of sufficient capacity,— if a little too capa- 
cious all the better, it will give him room to grow. 
He has a strong fleshy finger or hook at his tail, 
by which he firmly fixes himself in the spire of 
the shell ; and when he draws in his fore parts, he 
wraps his claws one on the other, and both on his 
head, in such a manner as to display nothing more 
than a smooth, hard, shelly surface filling the 
cavity. He shows fight however sometimes, and 
can pinch pretty hard. 
I obseryed on the beach some crabs [Grapsus 
p{Gtus)y which ran with amazing swiftness. Several 
kinds of madrepores, corals, and corallines, were 
thrown up by the tide, and two species of sponge, 
—one a very large .round specimen, a foot in dia- 
meter, resembling the common officinal kind, the 
' other crisper and more corally in texture. I spent 
an hour very pleasantly in these investigations, and 
was then reluctantly compelled by the captain’s 
anxiety to accompany him on board, soon after 
which, as the wind had veered a little, we got 
under vray. A white, butterfly {Pontia) followed 
us on board, but I could not catch it. 
