As an offset to all this bad feeling and bloodshed, it is a sad sight
to see the little Hermit when his time comes to die. However droll
his career may have been, he is now very grave, for he knows he must
part with life and all its joys and pleasures. Who can explain the
strange fact? The poor little fellow comes out of his house to die.
Yes, to die. To us humans home is the only fit place to die in, but
to Eupagurus it has no attractions at this solemn time. Poor fellow!
With a sad look and a melancholy movement he quits of his own will the
house for which he fought so well. Those feelers that often stood out
so provokingly, and that were quite as often poked into everybody’s
business, now lie prone and harmless; the eyes have lost their
pertness, and dead, stone dead, the houseless Hermit lies upon that
moss-covered rock.
There are two species of Hermit-crab occurring on our coast, which
are readily distinguishable from each other by their size and the
difference in the shape of the big claw. _Eupagurus pollicaris_, the
Warty Hermit, is the larger species. He inhabits the shells of the big
Naticas and the Fulgurs, and can be easily recognized by his coarse,
broad claws, which close up in great part the aperture of the shell
which he occupies. In the more common form, _Eupagurus longicarpus_,
which seldom attains a length exceeding an inch, the legs are all much
elongated, giving the animal a very slender appearance.
FUNNEL-WEB BUILDER.
Simple nests and tubes are all the majority of spiders construct for
their homes. The larger and better known webs for catching insects are
made by comparatively few species. He who is astir in the grass-fields
on damp summer mornings, will everywhere see innumerous flat webs, from
an inch or two to a foot in diameter, which weather-wise folks consider
prognostic of a fair day. These webs may always be found upon the grass
at the proper season, but only become visible from a distance when
the dew is upon them, making the earth appear as covered by an almost
continuous carpet of silk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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