THE CRAB FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 143 



lihood never came under the eye of the Scottish lobster fisherman, 

 who alone has frequent opportunities of capturing them. The size 

 of the crabs sent to the London market from Cornwall are 

 such as to throw into paltry insignificance those generally for- 

 warded from Scotland. Not that we have no such crabs on the 

 Scottish coast, but they could never enter a lobster-pot, and are 

 not sought after in crab-pots. The crabs of the Flannan Isles, or 

 about Heiskeir, would probably compare with any in the king- 

 dom, but we cannot always or indeed often get a chance of fishing 

 them, and consequently we are forced to fall on those of moderate 

 dimensions that can squeeze themselves through the rings of a 

 lobster-creel. Of those, an abundance reach the London market, 

 where they are disposed of at very moderate prices, the value of 

 a crab increasing by leaps and bounds as it approaches nearer to 

 an exceptional size. This accounts for the extreme disappoint- 

 ment caused to consigners from Scotland who have sent crabs to 

 the English market, where, after a long and costly railway journey, 

 they have to compete for a third rate place with the native 

 article. 



Two questions suggest themselves in this connection. The 

 first has reference to the possibility of procuriug a better class 

 of crabs to compete fairly with those of the Cornish coast ; the 

 second applies to the apparent want of a demand for our own 

 crabs in our own cities. 



With regard to the first, there is no reason to doubt that off 

 our wilder coasts the use of the crab-pot in place of the lobster- 

 creel, or supplementary to it, would procure a much larger class 

 of crab, at present never captured. Indeed, we have seen 

 lobsters taken in the netting of the creel that could never by 

 any possibility have entered the creel itself, and it is impossible 

 to argue that our native crabs are small because, in compara- 

 tively sheltered situations and inshore, they have not been 

 captured larger by means of creels that would not take them 

 had they been larger ! We are willing to admit that some of 

 the monster 12 lb. crabs from Cornwall may beat anything we 

 can hope to procure ; but these themselves are not common, 

 and it is a question if, with suitable apparatus, they could not 

 be matched. One thing is certain, that the use of good-sized 

 crab-pots, in the proper situation, would procure a much larger 

 average of crab than is at present taken as a " bye-product " in 

 the lobster-creels. Consignments of these would also naturally 

 be more likely to yield a return, as weight for weight the larger 

 crab would bring a much greater price in proportion. There is 

 no use, indeed, in forwarding the ordinary crab of our lobster- 

 creels to London ; they could not possibly do more at the best 

 than pay the carriage. The second question is more difficult to 

 answer. But it is certain that at one time there was a large 



