Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/180

Rh objects, as the great hairy Spiders (Mygale, Cteniza, &c.), the Wolf Spiders (Lycosa), and the Jumpers (Salticus, &c.), have the legs very short. Perhaps this parallel might be much extended; at the same time I must confess the rule is not without exception; as witness the arboreal Squirrels, whose fore limbs are sufficiently short.

Among the singular disguises by which familiar objects are sometimes rendered difficult of identification, not the least interesting are some that arise from the association of creatures very remote from each other in structure, habit, and zoological position. Many persons who know a Whelk as well as possible, hesitate when they see the familiar shell tenanted, not by the great black-spotted Mollusk, but by a mongrel between Crab and Lobster, with stout, red, pinching claws, and long, jointed, and pointed legs. And still more mysterious does the thing look, when two thirds of the shell itself is enclosed in a thick mass of purple-spotted flesh, through the midst of which the busy Crab is poking his head and limbs. In truth it is a strange affair, this threefold alliance of Whelk, Hermit crab, and Cloak-anemone.

Let me describe the last a little more particularly; it is the Adamsia palliata of zoologists. All round the mouth of the shell is firmly adhering a soft but firm pulpy mass of flesh, of which the upper part is commonly of a warm brown hue, but the under surface is delicately white, dotted over with round spots of rosy purple. I have said it adheres around the