ene from Martin's
mezzo-tint illustrations of the _Paradise Lost_. They are ghostly hosts
gathering for battle."

This must seem a most absurd idea in connection with prawns; but if you
have never seen prawns except at the breakfast-table, you must go to the
Great Aquarium to learn how impressive is their appearance in real life.

The warlike group which struck us so forcibly had gathered rapidly from
all parts of the pool upon a piece of flat table-rock that jutted out
high up. Some unexplained excitement agitated the host; their
innumerable spear-like antennae moved ceaselessly. From above a ray of
light fell just upon the table-rock where they were gathered, making the
waving spears glitter like the bayonet points of a body of troops, and
forming a striking contrast with the dark cliffs and overshadowed water
below, from which stragglers were quickly gathering, some paddling
across the deep pool, others scrambling up the rocks, and all with the
same fierce and restless expression.

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.

With No. 18 the window tanks come to an end.

In two other rooms are a number of shallow tanks open at the top, in
which are smaller sea-anemones, star