A Curious Sight. 49 



disease, potato disease, and saprolegnia 

 ferax, which has destroyed so many thou- 

 sands of salmon yearly, and many other 

 diseases called blights, we know little 

 about it, and less how to cure it. In our 

 English rivers crayfish are by no means 

 common, and in those comparatively few 

 in which they were formerly abundant 

 they are now scarce. They are found still 

 in large numbers in the New River, which 

 in part supplies London with water, and 

 were very abundant, and may be so still, 

 in the Stoke Newington reservoirs of the 

 New River Company. I remember one 

 rather curious incident in which these 

 strange little fellows played the chief part. 

 It was one hot afternoon in the sixties. 

 I was fishing from the sloping stone 

 embankment of one of these reservoirs. 

 The fish would not bite, and I was reading 

 on the bank, when I heard a peculiar 

 scratching noise. It went on for some 

 time ; and, on getting up to see the cause 

 of it, I saw that hundreds of crayfish were 

 crawling up out of the water on to the big 

 stones. The noise was caused by their 

 claws as they clambered upon the stones. 

 I say hundreds, but there must have been 

 thousands; for, on walking along the 

 bank, I never saw such a sight before or 

 since, and can only suppose that the 



