CRABS. 
19 
resumes its meal, daintily picking off morsels of fresh 
moss with its hands and putting them into its mouth. A 
life of constant watchfulness it lives and hourly peril, 
as many an empty shell in the pool bears witness. Its 
direst enemy, I believe, is the ghastly octopus, that 
ocean spider, lurking in crack or crevice, with deadly 
feelers extended, alive to their very tips and ready for 
the unwary. That this gelatinous goblin should be able 
to master the mail-clad 
warrior is wonderful but 
true. All his armour and 
his defiant claws avail 
nothing against the soft 
embrace of eight long 
arms and the kiss of a 
little crooked beak. 
Though their proper home is the border line between 
land and water, the crabs have pushed their conquests over 
nature in all directions. Some swim in the open sea, their 
feet being flattened into paddles, and these are horribly 
armed with long and sharp spines for the correction of 
greedy fishes. They have been found in the Bay of 
Biscay, a hundred miles from land, and are common on the 
