SHRIMPS, CRABS, AND BARNACLES 99 



prepared so as to show their natural colours in life, is 

 exhibited in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell 

 Road. 



A curious kind of prawn (by name Alpheus ruber), 

 of fair size, is found under " the low-tide rocks " in the 

 Channel Islands, which not only is of a deep crimson 

 colour, but snaps his fingers at you or rather one of 

 his fingers or claws when you try to catch him, mak- 

 ing a loud crack audible at ten yards distance. The 

 common big prawn, if you see him in a large vessel of 

 sea-water with the light shining through him, appears 

 very brilliantly marked with coloured bands and spots 

 reddish-brown, blue, and yellow which are displayed on 

 a transparent, almost colourless surface. Of course, 

 boiling turns him pale red. A common smaller species 

 of prawn when boiled is often sold as "pink shrimps," 

 and lately a deep-sea prawn a third species has come 

 from the Norwegian coast into the London market. 

 There are many kinds which are not abundant enough 

 to become " marketable." Prawns are at once dis- 

 tinguished from the true " brown shrimp " by having the 

 front end of the body drawn out into a sharp-toothed 

 spine, which is absent in the shrimp. Besides the 

 prawns (Palaemon and Pandalus), the shrimp (Crangon), 

 and the common lobster (Homarus), you may see in the 

 London fish shops the large spiny lobster (Palinurus) 

 called "langouste" by the French, and apparently 

 preferred by them as a table delicacy to the common 

 lobster, although it has no claws. It used to be called 

 " craw-fish " or " sea craw-fish " in London ; why, I am un- 

 able to say. The name was certainly bad, as it leads to 

 confusion with the cray-fish, the fresh- water lobster of 

 British and all European rivers (there are many other kinds 

 of fresh- water lobsters in other parts of the world, as well 



