Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/210

Rh rested on the savage Violet Fiddler (Portunus puber), whose biography I shall presently record. The last occasion on which I had seen my little Ebalia alive was two days before, when I had routed him out of his burrow to show him to a visitor.

The Soldiers (as indeed becomes their profession) are well known to be pugnacious and impudent; yet watchful and cautious. Indeed, their manners and disposition, no less than their appearance, bear the strongest resemblance to those of Spiders, a resemblance not peculiar to this genus, but more or less characteristic of all the Crabs. Two of them can scarcely approach each other without manifestations of hostility; each warily stretches out his long feet and feels the other, just as Spiders do, and strives to find an opportunity of seizing his opponent in some tender part with his own strong claws. Generally they are satisfied with the proofs afforded of mutual prowess, and each, finding the other armed at all points, retires; but, not unseldom, a regular passage of arms ensues, the claws are rapidly thrown about, widely gaping and threatening, and the combatants roll over and over in the tussle.

Sometimes, however, the aggressive spirit is more decided, more ferocious, more of the genuine Russian type. One in the Aquarium of the Zoological Gardens was seen to approach another, who tenanted a shell somewhat larger than his own, and, suddenly seizing his victim's front with his powerful claw, drag him like lightning from his house, into which the