CRUSTACEANS 



The famous ' broads ' and numerous streams of the county make it 

 a highly promising region for freshwater Entomostraca, and good ob- 

 servers have established the fact that within its borders these pigmies 

 flourish and abound. For marine Crustacea its conditions are not quite 

 so favourable. It can boast, indeed, of an extensive seaboard, and a 

 situation open to the great expanse of the North Sea, without being so 

 far northerly as to exclude occasional migrants from the warmer waters 

 of the English Channel. On the other hand, the coast line is not broken 

 up into those sheltering inlets which foster so many aquatic invertebrates. 

 The temperature of the water is not of that equable character which 

 makes life easy and serene. At Yarmouth the curious cancelling of the 

 tides by southern ebb meeting northern flow, and vice versa, entails an 

 indirect disadvantage. There is no great tract of shore, covered at times 

 by the sea and at fortnightly intervals left bare, such as in some districts 

 is so fruitful in creatures and so attractive to the naturalist. Conse- 

 quently English collectors of Crustacea have not much frequented this 

 station, and for several of our records relating to the coast of Norfolk we 

 are indebted to a German exploration of the North Sea, carried out some 

 forty years ago on board the steamship Pommerania. The Malacostraca 

 were the subject of a report by Dr. A. Metzger in the year 1875. 



Of the same date, however, we have a Report of the Fisheries of 

 Norfolk, especially Crabs, Lobsters, Herrings, and the Broads, by Frank 

 Buckland, inspector of Salmon Fisheries. Ordered, by the House of 

 Commons, to be printed, 11 August, 1875. From the title one 

 might be inclined to suppose that herrings and broads were companion 

 fishes. From the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 Mr. Buckland draws the 

 conclusion that ' a crab, therefore, is now a sea fish,' and he might have 

 added that, by pleasure of Parliament, so also is a periwinkle. Un- 

 disturbed by such definitions, the Report adduces evidence that at Lynn 

 there are ' no crabs or lobsters,' ^ and that there are ' no edible crabs or 

 lobsters ' at Wells, which is about twenty-nine miles east of Lynn,^ but 

 that in Lynn Harbour, and just below St. German's Bridge, shrimps have 

 been caught in some profusion.^ Also it appears that at Wells, ' shrimps, 

 since the new establishment was made to enclose the western salt marshes, 

 have been very scarce in the harbour.' * Small crabs, three inches or 

 less across the back, are locally called toggs or shortcrabs, and these 

 are very useful for bait ; but to their wholesale destruction some of the 

 fishermen attributed a general decline in the crab-catching industry." 



^ Report, p. 30. ^ Ibid. p. 48. ^ Ibid. p. 40. * Ibid. p. 48. 



^ Ibid. p. 51. On the subsequent improvement of that industry see 'Life and Letters 

 of Thomas Henry Huxley,' vol. ii. p. 24, 1900. 



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