How I longed for a chance of sketching the scene!
Prawns are not quite such colourless creatures in the sea as they are
here. Why they lose their colour and markings in captivity is not known.
They seem otherwise well.
They are hungry creatures, and their scent is keen.
The shrimps keep more out of sight; they burrow in the sand a good deal.
You know one has to look for fresh-water shrimps in a brook if one wants
to find them.
In Tank 18 are our old friends the hermit-crabs. As a child, I think I
believed that these curious creatures killed the original inhabitants of
the shells which they take for their own dwelling. It is pleasant to
know that this is not the case. The hermit-crab is in fact a
sea-gentleman, who is so unfortunate as to be born naked, and quite
unable to make his own clothes, and who goes nervously about the world,
trying on other people's cast-off coats till he finds one to fit him.
They are funnily fastidious about their shells, feeling one well inside
and out before they decide to try it, and hesitating sometimes between
two, like a lady between a couple of becoming bonnets. They have been
said to be pugnacious; but I fancy that the old name of soldier-crabs
was given to them under the impression that they killed the former
proprietors of their shells.
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