The Shrimp's Food, 233 



The rapidity and burrowing powers of the shrimps in moist 

 sand are surprising. Several eminent naturalists affirm that 

 there is a reciprocal relation of colour to habitat light where 

 sandy, darker where muddy. Some of our Thames shrimpers 

 hold that this is not the case. On the contrary, they find that 

 the shrimps taken on muddy grounds (e.g., the Blyth, &c.) are 

 more often pale or somewhat blanched in colour, and they cook 

 of a still paler hue. Whereas on sandy ground (say Oaze or 

 Warp) the shrimps caught are more highly coloured, both 

 when fresh and cooked. We are inclined to think moreover 

 that in the aged there is an accession of pigment irrespective 

 of the nature of the bottom. 



Their Food. As to this, we find the juvenile shore shrimps 

 are busy scavengers in their way. Odds and ends come not 

 amiss, so be it that they contain fleshy morsels to their taste. 

 Perchance brown diatomaceous frustules, atoms of sea-weed and 

 fine sand with traces of mud-worms, &c. The older shrimps 

 appear to have a more comprehensive dietary, its nature some- 

 what depending on the time of year and in what locality they 

 are feeding. The bulk of their food is quite fragmentary and 

 microscopic. There is a pretty constant presence of infinitesimal 

 sand-granules, and when on some grounds occasionally a 

 tendency to muddy particles or shreds of extraneous plant- 

 tissues, &c., all which foreign matter evidently are swallowed 

 at random with their true provender. 



Like most Crustaceans, animal substance predominates in 

 their fare. Still Diatoms, threadlike algie and comminuted 

 pickings of seaweeds are present at times. We have detected 

 Foraminifera, even scraps of sponges (judging from triradiate 

 spicules, &c.), likewise Hydroid structures. Where the tube- 

 forming worms Pectinaria* (see Fig. 30) is numerous, there 

 shrimps congregate and greedily feed on them. Several species 

 of Annelids, the Nereids particularly, can be identified, and are 



* Lovett mentions his finding a shrimp which had backed into a Pectinaria tube, 

 and there got stuck fast (" Zool.," Dec., 1885). 



