CHAr. ix. J LOBSTER COMMERCE. 387 



beach. There are few seaside places where the natives cannot 

 guide strangers to rock pools and picturesque nooks teeming 

 with materials for studying the wonders of the shore. 



Lobsters are collected and sent to London from all parts 

 of the Scottish shore. I have seen on the Sutherland and 

 other coasts the perforated chests floating in the water filled 

 with them. They were kept till called for by the welled 

 smacks, which generally made the circuit of the coasts once a 

 week, taking up all the lobsters or crabs they could get, and 

 carrying them alive to London. From the Durness shores 

 alone as many as from six to eight thousand lobsters have 

 been collected in the course of a single summer, and sold, big 

 or little, at threepence each to the buyers. The lobsters taken 

 on the north-east coast of Scotland and at Orkney are now 

 packed in seaweed and sent in boxes to London by railway. 

 The lobsters have been more plentiful, it is thought, in the 

 Orkney Islands of late years ; a larger trade has been done 

 in them since the railway was opened from Aberdeen at all 

 events, more of the animals have been caught, and the prices 

 are double what they used to be in the time of the welled 

 smacks alluded to above. The fisher-folks of Orkney confess 

 that the trade in lobsters pays them well. 



All kinds of crustaceans can be kept alive at the place of 

 capture till " wanted " that is, till the welled vessel which 

 carries them to London or Liverpool arrives by simply 

 storing them in a large perforated wooden box anchored in a 

 convenient place. Nor must it be supposed that the acute 

 London dealers allow too many lobsters to .be brought to 

 market at once ; the supply is governed by the demand, 

 and the stock kept in large store-boxes at convenient places 

 down the river, where the sea-water is strong and the liquid 

 filth of London harmless. But these old-fashioned store- 

 boxes will, no doubt, be speedily superseded by the construc- 

 tion of artificial store-ponds on a large scale, similar to that 



