6 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL . 
the sea-shore for multitude, dragging their cumbrous 
houses about with them and thrusting out their dis- 
torted arms to pick up food, and shrinking in again 
at the least sign of danger. Safety they have bought 
with degradation, but there are moments of supreme peril 
even in the base life that they lead ; for the crab grows 
and the shell does not, and it is an inexorable law of 
nature that, when you change your coat, you must put 
off the old before you put on the new. The most 
ludicrous sight I ever saw was two hermit crabs com- 
peting for an empty shell. Neither of them could by 
any means take possession without exposing his naked 
and deformed posteriors to the mercy of the other, and 
this he dared not do ; so they manoeuvred and circled 
round that shell and made grimaces at each other till 
I laughed like the blue jays in Jim Baker’s yarn. 
Others of the race have tried to win security by burying 
themselves in the mud at the bottom of the sea and 
stretching out their beggar hands for food. The hands 
work hard, but the stomach is starved, and in some of 
this family the body has dwindled into a mere appendage 
to a great pair of claws. Of these is the giant from 
Japan, whose grim skeleton, eleven feet in stretch of limb, 
