234 
LITTLE FOLKS 
He's a famous fighter. He will fight for a piece of meat, or 
for a desirable shell. In fact, a Hermit Crab who secures a par- 
ticularly nice house, goes through life fighting to keep possession 
of it. To ' see one of these fellows fitting himself to a shell is 
funny enough. He's as particular as a woman hiring a house. 
He tries it in every way — holding it off to see if it is too large, 
going in to see if it is big enough. When he is suited, he whisks 
into it, and then he is settled. 
Here he is in his house. Do you see that curious looking 
thing on his shell, that looks like a short piece of a column with a 
fringe around the top ? Well, that is another animal, that is very 
fond of living on tne shell of a Hermit Crab. It is called the 
Cloak Anemone, and though it can live on a stone, it prefers to ride 
about. Mr. Gosse — an English naturalist, who has studied these 
little creatures very carefully — says that the Cloak Anemone may 
almost always be found on a Hermit's shell. He thinks, too, that 
the Hermit is fond of his companion, for he has seen one, when he 
grew too large for his shell, and fitted himself with a new one, 
carefully take off the anemone from the old shell, and place it com- 
fortably on the new one, and then give it several little taps with his 
big claws, to settle it. 
But Mr. Gosse has seen a stranger thing than that, about this 
Crab. He has had a Hermit in his aquarium, which had a fellow 
lodger inside his shell. I will let him tell his own story. 
" When I was feeding him with cooked meat, which he having 
seized with one claw and held to his jaws, was munching, I saw 
