136 BY THE DEEP SEA. 



opening. The prevailing notion is that these pots are so con- 

 structed that it is well-nigh impossible for a crab to get out 

 again ; but this is not so, and the fishermen know they must 

 go round every morning whilst the crab or lobster is still at 

 breakfast on the savoury viands they have provided, and haul 

 their pots before he has thoughts of finding the way out. Im- 

 proved pots have been invented, from which it is impossible 

 for a crab or lobster to escape, but the fisherman is extremely 

 conservative, and sticks religiously to the ways and means of 

 his father's great-grandfather. 



Having taken his captures from the pots and thrown them 

 into the bottom of his boat, the fisherman rows with them to 

 a protected area of deep-water near the shore, in which each 

 of the crabbers keeps his own store-pot or hully, and hauling 

 his own particular hully, puts his new captures in. This he 

 will continue to do perhaps till the end of the week, or until 

 the merchant comes round with his boat to buy. 



Now, having spent so much time over Cancer pagnrus, we 

 must leave him, and pay some brief attention to other mem- 

 bers of his family of small concern in the crabber's eyes, but 

 of equal interest to the student of nature. Under the over- 

 hanging masses of Fucus that drape the rocks, in the smaller 

 holes of those rocks and among the stones on the floor of the 

 drang, we are bound to meet with innumerable specimens of 

 two crabs that possess no English name. It is true that if 

 you ask the boys of the place whom you will find at times 

 among the rocks (and they are the most reliable of local 

 informants on such matters), they will tell you, with a flavour 

 of contempt for the crabs, that these are " devil crabs ; " but 

 later on you will find that this term is not specific but generic, 

 for they apply it to several species that are worthless in their 

 eyes. In a similar mood, the adult fisherman will tell you 

 they (and a number of others) are " Zebedees or devil crabs." 

 Well, Dr. Leach, who founded the genus in 1813, would prob- 

 ably have called it yellow-crab in the vernacular, for he 



