Interesting as were these habits of the cenobite crustacean, his keeping a policeman or two on guard on his roof, and moving them to his successive domiciles, was more so.  These policemen are anemones, and I saw hermit crab-shells with three or four on them, and one even in the mouth of the shell.  When the anchorite was ready for a new shell, he left his old one and examined the new ones acutely.  Finding one to suit his expected growth, he entered it belly first, and transferred the anemone, by clawing and pulling loose its hold, to the outside of his chosen shell.  How skilfully this was done may be judged by the fact that I could not get one free without tearing the cup-like base which fastened it.  The anemone assisted in the operation by keeping its tentacles expanded, whereas it withdrew them if any foreign object came near.  The stinging cells of the anemone prevent fishes from attacking the hermit, and that is the reason of his care for the parasite.  It is the commensalism of the struggle for existence, learned not by the individual crab, but by his race.  Some crabs wield an anemone firmly grasped in each claw, the stinging nematocysts of the parasite warding off the devilish octopus, and the anemone having a share of the crab’s meals and the pleasure of vicarious transportation.  The anemone at the mouth of the shell keeps guard at the weakest spot of the hermit’s armor.

These sea-anemones themselves are mysterious evidences of the gradual advance of organisms from the slime to the poem.  They are animals, and attach themselves by a muscular base to the rocks or shells, or are as free-swimming as perch.  I saw them two feet in diameter, seeming all vegetable, some like chrysanthemums and some resembling embroidered pin-cushions.  They were of many colors, and are of the coral family.

In this wonderful sea garden, where lobsters, crabs, sea-urchins, turbos, starfish, and hundreds of other sentient beings lived, I saw a thousand true scaled fish, most of them highly colored, and many so curiously marked, fashioned, and equipped with eccentric members that I was startled into biblical phrases.  In the market they were strange enough, dead and on the marble slabs, or in green leaves, but in the lagoon they were a kaleidoscope of complexions and shapes.  They were the lovely elves to complement the fantastic shellfish, yellow, striped with violet; bright turquoise, with a gold collar; gold, with broad bands of black terminating in winglike fins; scarlet, with cobalt polka-dots; silver, with a rosy flush; glossy green, dazzling crimson, black velvet, solid red.

They darted and flashed in and out of the caves in the coral, caressed the sea-anemones, idled about the shells, avoided by dexterous twistings and turnings a thousand collisions, and continued ever the primary endeavor, the search for those particular bits of food their appetites craved.