| Show AT THE AQUARIUM feeding time of life in the It luceil hauha aheu the decorator crab gets too big for its shell it does what many other eh do it sheds it emerging with its new shell already formed but at that stage of its growth pliable and not much thicker than paper in its boft shell state it is comparatively defenseless and it keeps ont of ayot other shellfish if it can but its new shell eoon hardens and then it goes about in its accustomed manner the decorator increases greatly perhaps a third in size almost immediately after leaving its old shell which it scarcely seems possible it could ever have inhabited but it gets out of the old shell nevertheless without damaging it and leaving it often disposed in a most lifelike life liko form the decorators at tho aquarium are fed separately so that will be sure to get its portion the food is put down to them on the tip of a little stick which is shaken gently over them and the food thus detached falls within abo crabs grasp there is no current in the balanced tanka in which the eua aller decorators are and anything dropped in tho water drops straight down the other day there were found in one of tanks clinging to the ulva two decorators which were supplied as usual by placing their food in tho water where they would be sure to get it being somewhat pressed for time that day however the man who fed them did not wait to seo the crabs actually cat lie placed their food within reach and trusted them to do the rest but glancing in at this tank on bis return from feeding the small fishes and things in abo other balanced tanks he saw the two decorators that he had found on the ulva still there and in precisely the same attitudes as before and then he realized that they were not live crabs but eh eddings ho had been feeding empty shells on taking them out of the tank ho found inside of one of them the fragment of food which he had dropped for it which had fallen into it through tho opening between the upper and the lower part of the shell which the crab bad made in getting out it may lie that abo two decorators formerly residing in these shells but now secure in some distant part of the tank with new shells hardening on their backs smiled as they thought of tho feeding of their empty shells it ie certain that the man who fed them smiled as he arranged them for preservation in abo aquariums collections new orb san |
