14 



might be otherwise if the men who fish limited areas 

 could be made to understand that in the long run close 

 protection will prove their best friend. 



We are eating these large crustaceans as luxuries, and 

 we are eating shrimps and prawns as dainties ; but between 

 these two there exist several species of crustaceans which 

 attain maturity at a size of from three to five inches across 

 the back which we never think of eating, but which yet are 

 full of excellent meat. We make a delicacy of the river 

 crayfish, but we despise, or rather utterly ignore, the spider 

 crab, the shore crab, the two larger Xanthos, the velvet 

 swimming crab, the Galatheas (squat lobsters) and many 

 others — including the one, Scyllarus arctiis, which I have 

 mentioned, but which must, in the present state of our 

 knowledge about it, be treated as of very local permanent 

 occurrence in our seas ; other observers than myself, placed 

 by my experience on the scent, may establish it as a 

 common inhabitant of our waters. Of all of those, untold 

 stores might be captured along all our rocky sea-shores, 

 and all of them yield good food in larger quantities, and 

 with not much more trouble, than would an average prawn. 

 We do not trouble about them, and their capture is, as I 

 have shown, a chance affair ; but go to the Japanese De- 

 partment, or the Chinese, or even to our own Department 

 of Speculative Ideas in this building, and see what endless 

 pots and models of pots and traps there are exhibited there, 

 designed on purpose to catch prawns and shrimps, but 

 which would also catch these wasted treasures of the sea, 

 if they were looked after. 



This waste of food supply is due to two causes — one is 

 that the " men that know " (the scientific naturalists) take 

 no measures to reduce their knowledge into practice. And 

 the other is that the " men that work " (the fishermen) are 



