172 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
other animals besides himself, for a parasitic anemone 
often lives upon his shell, and a beautiful worm* 15 
shelters within it and has been seen to tear the food 
out of the crab's mouth. 
So each in their several ways, the prawns, lobsters, 
and crabs, struggle for their livelihood. Brave, hardy, 
and voracious, they spare scarcely any creature of the 
sea of moderate size, whether dead or living, and 
they fight so madly, that fishermen sending lobsters 
alive to London, are obliged to run a piece of wood 
in the joints of the claws to prevent them from 
maiming each other on the road. 
They care but little for lost limbs, for these will 
grow again ; and when wounded, so that they might 
bleed to death, they throw off the shattered limb 
at the next joint, where a new skin quickly forms, 
and the danger is averted. No doubt hundreds die 
both in youth and age, yet the multitudes never 
diminish, for one lobster alone will produce 20,000 
eggs, which she will carry patiently for six months 
under her abdomen, fastened together by gluey 
threads. Even after she has broken open the eggs 
by the movement of her tail, and released the baby 
lobsters, she will still carry them till their coat is 
hard and firm, and only then leave them to wander 
alone. The crab and the prawn, on the contrary, 
turn their little ones out at once to swim as scarcely 
visible specks in the open sea, where they feed and 
grow till their strange changes of shape are worked 
out. 
The crab family, however, are not satisfied with 
one kind of life ; the velvet fiddler-crab of our shores 
* Nereis bilineata. 
