CHAP, ix.] FECUNDITY OF SHELL-FISH. 383 



fishes, it will be obvious that there is much in their natural 

 history that must prove interesting even to the most general 

 reader. Each oyster, as we have seen, gives birth to almost in- 

 credible quantities of young. Lobsters also have an amazing 

 fecundity, and yield an immense number of eggs each female 

 producing from twelve to twenty thousand in a season ; and 

 the crab is likewise most prolific. I lately purchased a crab 

 weighing within an ounce of two pounds, and it contained a 

 mass of minute eggs equal in size to a man's hand ; these 

 were so minute that a very small portion of them, picked off 

 with the point of a pin, when placed on a bit of glass, and 

 counted by the aid of a powerful microscope, numbered over 

 sixty, each appearing of the size of a red currant, and not at 

 all unlike that fruit : so far as I could guess the eggs were 

 not nearly ripe. I also examined about the same time a 

 quantity of shrimp eggs ; and it is curious that, while there 

 are the cock and hen lobster, I never saw any difference in the 

 sex of the shrimps : all that I handled, amounting to hundreds, 

 were females, and all of them were laden with spawn, the eggs 

 being so minute as to resemble grains of the finest sand. 



Although the crustacean family counts its varieties by 

 thousands, and contains members of all sizes, from minute 

 animalculse to gigantic American crabs and lobsters, and 

 ranges from the simplest to the most complex forms, yet the 

 edible varieties are not at all numerous. The largest of these 

 are the lobster (Astacus marinus) and the crab (Cancer 

 pagurus) ; and river and sea cray-fish may also be seen in 

 considerable quantities in London shell-fish shops ; and as 

 for common shrimps (Crangon vulgaris) and prawns (Palcemon 

 serratis), they are eaten in myriads. The violet or marching- 

 crab of the West Indies, and the robber crab common to the 

 islands of the Pacific, are also esteemed as great delicacies of 

 the table, but are unknown in this country except by reputation. 



Leaving old and grave people to study the animal economy 



