128 HISTOEY OF BRITISH CRUSTACEA. 



but never far from land. The Prawn is usually taken with 

 a bag-net suspended from a circular ring of iron at the 

 end of a pole. It is a tempting bait for most sea-fishes. 

 (« Cornish Fauna/ p. 80.) 



From one of Mr. Gosse's delightful chapters in his 

 'Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast/ * we extract 

 a few descriptive sentences of the appearance of the Prawn 

 when gliding gracefully along in its native haunts, and not 

 as we generally see it, boiled, on a plate. " The tail-fans 

 are widely dilated, rendering conspicuous the contrasted 

 colours with which they are painted ; the jaws are ex- 

 panded, the feet hanging loosely beneath. Now one rises 

 to the surface almost perpendicularly ; then glides down 

 towards the bottom, sweeping up again in a graceful curve. 

 Now he examines the weeds, then shoots under the dark 

 angles of the rock. . . . This Prawn, that comes to our 

 tables decked out and penetrated, as it were, with a delicate 

 pellucid rose-colour, beautiful as he is then, is far more 

 beautiful when just netted from the bottom, or from the 

 overhanging weed-grown side of some dark pool. . . . 

 There he is, . . . with extended eyes, antennse stretching 

 perpendicularly upwards, claws held out divergently, with 

 * P. 39. 



