WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. 89 



iu a whole gale, not at all so helpless as one might imagine; and I 

 know from other observations that in light winds a butterfly can 

 weather on any ordinary sailiug-boat, and will do so, going to 

 seaward. What his motive may be I don't pretend to explain. 

 One can hardly credit a butterfly with the ideas of a Columbus. 



In Crustacea our waters are rich enough. We have no true 

 lobster (Homarus), but the lobster's place and name are taken on 

 our tables by several marine cray fishes. There is a certain confu- 

 sion about the popular names of the long-tailed crustaceans which 

 I shall try to clear up, so far as may be. A lobster is a long-tailed 

 marine crustacean having claws big enough to be worth eating, a 

 hard, black, calcareous shell, and a long serrated horn on his fore- 

 head. A river cray-fish (Astacus) is a sort of dwarf lobster. His 

 English name is derived from the French (Ecrevisse) , and he has 

 stood godfather to a lot of sea " cray-fishes," which differ in having 

 no claws big enough for the table. Among these are the French 

 Langoustes (which inFrance are considered better than lobsters, the 

 opposite doctrine obtaining in England) and the "lobbishta" of our 

 butlers. In these the horn, as well as the claws, is absent, or much 

 smaller than in Homaries, and is also apt to be squai*erin section. 



A prawn is a dwarf lobster, with the regular horn, and sometimes 

 with the broad heavy claw. One of our common species here is a 

 perfect miniature lobster in shape. But the prawn's shell is entire- 

 ly or mostly horny; and more or less translucent. A shrimp, 

 again, has no horn or claws to speak of. The whole group, however, 

 are very closely connected with each other, and are known to 

 science as "Macrurous Decapod Crustacea, " that is, "long-tailed, 

 ten-legged, shelly creatures. " The prawns in particular are 

 extremely numerous here, and many of them are very richly 

 coloured, though unluckily the colours do not last in spirit. Most 

 of them, after death (no matter how caused) turn red, or reddish- 

 white. One small marine species appears to be born boiled. We 

 have several fresh water species. A very small one haunts mountain 

 springs with the Alpine carps and loaches. A very fine one is found 

 in all our rivers, and is a source of great annoyance to the angler, 

 unless he is hooked, which is very difficult to manage. However, 

 as the capture of the prawn requires far more skill or luck than that 

 of any vertebrate fish in our waters, and as he is very much superior 

 to these for the table, an angler sometimes gets a good deal of com- 

 fort out of him. The prawn swims low, never more than three feet 

 12 



