“COME here, mamma, please do come this very minute. I never saw a shellfish run so fast before. It came out of a hole in the rock and crossed over the patch of yellow sand where Nellie and I were digging, and now I think it is hiding away under that heap of seaweed.”
And as Bertie Smith, who, with his mother and sister Nellie, was enjoying an autumn holiday at the seaside, was, like many of my young friends, anxious to learn, not only the names, but the life histories of many curious and interesting object’s to be found on the sea-shore, Mrs. Smith closed the book she had been reading, and, after stooping for a few minutes over the heap of seaweed that Bertie had pointed out as the retreat of what I have no doubt some of my little readers have already guessed to be a hermit crab, she said: "Sit down by my side on this piece of rock, Bertie; and if we wait patiently a little while, perhaps we may see the hermit crab (for that is the name by which the little creature is best known), come out again.”
“Oh, please will you tell me why it is called a hermit crab? It seems such a strange name. Grandpa once showed me a picture of an old man with long white hair, and told me that many years ago the old man, who was called a hermit, used to live all alone in a little hut he had built for himself of the boughs of trees.”
“I think the hermit crab, like the man in the picture, generally chooses to live alone. French children call it Bernard, the hermit, while the fishermen in some parts of England and along the Irish coast, speak of it as the soldier crab. In shape, it is something like a lobster, its claws are cased in a covering of shell, but its soft body is covered only by a skin, and would often get badly hurt if God had not given it the kind of instinct that leads it to seek a home just suited to its wants.
“It is very amusing to watch one of these little crabs busily engaged in the search for a house. It crawls quickly over the beach, and when it finds an empty shell, turns it over and seems to say, ‘How will this house suit me?’ One shell may be too large, another too small, but at last one just right as to size and shape is found. It very often happens that two crabs fix upon the same shell, and when this is the case they fight till one is killed, or so seriously wounded it is obliged to crawl away, leaving the victor to take possession of the shell, which it does by walking backwards until it has twisted its soft body into the folds of the shell, and taken hold of it by means of a strong hook at the end of its tail. It is then able to walk about carrying its house upon its back.
“But as the tenant grows very quickly it has soon to look for a larger dwelling, and sometimes lives in quite a number of shells before it gets its full growth. The right claw is larger than the left. You had better not put your fingers too near it, for, like others of its kind, it knows how to punish an intruder, and will allow itself to be killed rather than give up its shell.”
“I think we are having such a good time at the seaside, mamma; and yet it is almost like being at school, for Nellie and I are learning something new every day, and I shall know a hermit crab now; and perhaps, if I watch, I may even see one take possession of a new house. Do you think there are many of them on the beach?”
“Do not forget that the great whale and the small crab alike, tell us of the wisdom and goodness of God. But it is in the Bible we read of His love in the gift of His own Son, Jesus Christ. I often hear Nellie and yourself singing, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'
“But can you say, ‘The Lord Jesus is my very own Savior? I know He died to save me?' and He has promised that I shall go to dwell with Himself.”