of the small shrimp and prawn order, which are not carefully 

 looked after, except by naturalists making the study of 

 them their speciality. Of the others (to which I have 

 given much practical attention) I have captured in Mount's 

 Bay with my own hands certainly four fifths of the species 

 known to exist, including many of the rarest specimens 

 occurring in our seas. 



I may explain that the reason why I have seen so many 

 species of crustaceans more than my neighbours is that I 

 have fished for them myself. Most of the sea crustaceans 

 are small and considered valueless. This is a misapprehen- 

 sion, nearly all of them yielding dainty food ; but the 

 fisherman is intensely conservative in his instincts, and it is a 

 very difficult thing to get him to preserve a crab or a lobster 

 or any of the class which has not already established itself 

 as an edible and saleable commodity. To begin with, they 

 are all his natural enemies. Unless they are caught in the 

 legitimate crab-pot, from which all small specimens can 

 escape, they are taken in his nets. They come into the net 

 in pursuit of the best fish caught in it, and they get 

 entangled. So long as they have life they are using their 

 claws to cut the cords of the net, and so it happens that 

 every crustacean does damage to the net which captures it. 

 The fisherman, intent on his better fish, never waits to 

 disentangle a crab of any sort unless it is a valuable one. 

 He simply wrenches off its legs or lays it, in the net, on 

 the gunwale of the boat and smashes it with his hand to 

 deprive it of the power of doing further mischief, and goes 

 on with the hauling of his net. Thus, rare crustaceans are 

 rarely recognised. I have had in the last thirty years 

 constant opportunities of reversing this process, and of 

 carefully picking out of my nets thousands of little crabs 

 which would have been passed without notice by the 



