496 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



beloved many little taps, as if to fix it there the more quickly. Another 

 species of Bernhardus makes a companion of the mantled anemone. 

 " And we are assured," says Moquin-Tandon, " that when the crab 

 dies its inconsolable friend is not long in succumbing also." 



" Is there not here much more than what our modern physiologists 

 call automatic movements, the results of reflex sensorial action?" says 

 Grosse. " The more I study the lower animals, the more firmly am 

 I persuaded of the existence in them of psychical faculties, such as 

 consciousness, intelligence, skill, and choice ; and that even in those 

 forms in which as yet no nervous centres have been detected." 



LOBSTERS. 



In a dietary, as well as commercial sense, the lobster far excels the 

 crab ; like the latter, they have an amazing fecundity, each female 

 producing from twelve to twenty thousand eggs in a season ; and wisely 

 is it so arranged, otherwise the consumption would soon exhaust 

 them. 



In France the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, 

 and fixed at twenty centimetres (eight inches) in length ; all under 

 that size are contraband. Every year the inhabitants of Blainville 

 proceed to Chaussey to fish for lobsters. They are taken in baskets 

 in the form of a truncated cone, the mouth of which is so arranged 

 that the animal can enter, but cannot get out. The numbers caught 

 by each fisherman and his family in a season may be estimated at a 

 thousand or twelve hundred, which realise to the family thirteen or 

 fourteen hundred francs, the season lasting about nine months. 



Lobsters are collected all round our own coast for the London 

 market. On the Scottish shore they are collected and kept in per- 

 forated chests floating on the water, until they can be taken away to 

 market. From the Sutherland coast alone six to eight thousand 

 lobsters are collected in a season. This process goes on all round the 

 coast, and as far as Norway, whence an enormous supply of the finest 

 lobsters are obtained, for which something like 20,000 per annum is 

 paid, all these contributions being conveyed to the Thames and 

 Mersey in welled vessels. But these old-fashioned systems are being 

 rapidly superseded by the construction of artificial storing ponds, or 

 basins. Of these ponds Mr. Kichard Scovell has erected one at 



