loo DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



as fresh-water prawns and crabs), whose EngHsh name is a 

 curious corruption of the French one, " ^crevisse " (cray- 

 vees, cray-fish). Another lobster of our markets is the 

 little one known as the " Dublin prawn," which is 

 common enough on the Scotch and Norwegian coasts, as 

 well as that of Ireland. Naturalists distinguish it as 

 Nephrops Norvegicus. The great edible crab completes 

 the list of British marketable crustaceans, but in Paris 

 I have eaten, as well as at Barcelona, a very large 

 Mediterranean prawn, three times as big as our biggest 

 Isle of Wight prawns, but by no means so good. It is 

 called " Barcelona prawn " and " Langostino " (" Penaeus " 

 by naturalists). In Madrid I have seen in the fish shops 

 and eaten yet another crustacean — a very curious one — 

 namely, a long-stalked rock-barnacle of the kind known 

 to naturalists as Pollicipes. 



That the barnacles — ship's barnacles (Fig. lo) and 

 with them the little sea-acorns (Fig. ii), those terribly 

 hard and sharp little white " pimples " which cover the 

 rocks nearly everywhere just below high-tide mark, and 

 have so cruelly lacerated the hands and shins of all of 

 us who swim and have had to return to a rocky shore 

 in a lively sea — should be included with crabs, lobsters, 

 and shrimps as " crustaceans " must appear astonishing 

 to every one who hears it for the first time. The extra- 

 ordinarily ignorant, yet in their own estimation learned, 

 fishermen of the Scottish coast will tell you with solemn 

 assurance that the ubiquitous encrusting sea-acorns are 

 the young of the limpet, whilst the creature living inside 

 the shell of the long-stalked ship's barnacles has for 

 ages been discoursed of by the learned as one of the 

 marvels of the sea — nothing more or less than a young l( 

 bird — the young, in fact, of a goose — the barnacle goose 

 which, since it was thus proved to be a fish in origin, 



