CRUSTACEANS 



For studying this class of animals, characteristically though not exclusively aquatic, Suffolk 

 makes kindly provision. It includes among its natural advantages a wealth of waters helpful to this 

 purpose. Several slow-flowing rivers at various points form lake-like expansions. Little winding 

 brooks feed the more important streams. Watercourses wide or narrow frequently intersect the 

 land to regulate its drainage. Ponds and wells and marshes are not wanting. In all directions 

 aquatic plants are present to feed, to shelter, or sometimes to entrap innumerable crustacean tenants. 

 A considerable sea-board allows the species of the North Sea to approach the eastern border of the 

 county. Fleets of trawlers bring to its harbours a vast variety of fishes, on which a due proportion 

 of parasitic Entomostraca are always sure to be lurking. Nevertheless, in the past the carcinology 

 of Suffolk, in regard to several orders and tribes, has been much neglected. To this neglect the 

 creatures themselves contribute by their prevailing love of concealment. In the fishing industry 

 the hard necessities of business leave men little time for paying attention to the intrusive fish-lice 

 and sea-fleas, which are practically their competitors in the same trade. For the more or less popular 

 pursuit of shore-hunting, the coast-line of Suffolk is not wholly satisfactory. Much of it is too 

 exposed and unindented to favour the immediate approach of shelter-loving animals. At Yarmouth 

 the ebb and flow from the north coinciding with the flow and ebb from the south by their counter- 

 action give to the rise and fall of the tide a very restricted range. Hence any one whose field of 

 exploration is between tide-marks finds there but little encouragement. 



The earliest notices of Crustacea observed in this county seem to be those which occur in the 

 earliest writings of Dr. William Elford Leach, who, while quite a young man, nearly a hundred 

 years ago won distinction for himself and for English science by his scientific treatment of this class. 

 As will be shown in due course, he mentions from this coast four species of Malacostraca. Then 

 followed an interval of some fifty years, during which apparently no further records were forth- 

 coming, until a new epoch opened with Dr. G. S. Brady's important monograph on Recent British 

 Ostracoda, published by the Linnean Society in 1868. It is rather surprising that this work did not 

 more largely stimulate the collection of entomostracans in a district so admirably fitted to supply them 

 in variety and abundance. It may perhaps have revealed only too clearly that to facility of col- 

 lecting succeeds no little difficulty of discriminating these minute objects. Except for renewed 

 researches by Dr. Brady himself, in company with his friend, the late David Robertson of Cumbrae, 

 little effort was made to bring the micro-fauna of Suffolk into greater prominence. In 1875 the 

 report of Dr. Aug. Metzger, on the invertebrates dredged by the German vessel Pommerania in the 

 North Sea, added several malacostracans to the hitherto scanty list accredited to this county. Soon 

 afterwards Dr. Brady, in his Monograph of the Copepoda of Great Britain, published by the Ray 

 Society, recorded a few species of that order from Suffolk localities. 



Although the Malacostraca that have to be named are comparatively few, the species are 

 distributed over many genera, families, and orders. They are pretty equally divided between the 

 Podophthalma or stalk-eyed section, which have pedunculate movable eyes, and the sessile-eyed 

 Edriophthalma, in which the eyes are fixed, without stalk or articulation. To the former section 

 belong the crab, the lobster, the crayfish, the prawn, and the shrimp, within which alliance the 

 popular idea of this class is often strictly confined. In the other section are included the woodlouse 

 and the sandhopper, with many other forms in endless variety, united by the firmest bonds of 

 relationship to the shrimp and the crab. Mankind are fastidious and, as a rule, eat only those 

 crustaceans that can waggle their eyes, whereas almost all marine animals and many birds feed 

 on sessile-eyed • species without reluctance. Among the Podophthalma the highest place is 

 generally conceded to the Brachyura or short-tails, because in their organization the ganglionic 

 chain is most concentrated, and because the actions of many among them are, 01 seem to be, 

 in no small degree intelligent and purposeful. Between a naked savage and the well-dressed 

 gentleman of to-day an intermediate state of civilization is represented by the Indian in his 

 feathers and war-paint. The tribe of the Oxyrrhyncha, or crabs with sharpened beaks, behave 

 much like the Indian. They do not indeed try to make themselves terrible in aspect, but by 

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