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practical knowledge of the baits we use in fishing for crabs 

 and lobsters. In each case we use fish bait I once 

 discovered a benighted little fishing cove where the fisher- 

 men actually commonly used large turbot and red mullet 

 a pound and a half and over in weight for bait for crab. 

 They had no market for turbot and red mullet, whilst they 

 had for their crabs and lobsters. Having, of course, much 

 finer gear with me than they used, I very soon harried the 

 inshore sands, and established a barter market in which 

 one turbot of good size was exchanged for one ray of any 

 size, and a small ray equalled a good red mullet. When 

 ray were scarce with me, the market price of a turbot was 

 is., and that of a red mullet 6d. 



To this question of the bait offered to which means, of 

 course, the favourite food of some crabs, I can offer 

 another illustration. The red mullet which we catch are 

 taken in fixed-bottom fishing nets called trammels, and the 

 fish caught in these nets frequently remain for many hours 

 before they are taken out, and we find that crabs, and 

 especially the spider crab our English representative of 

 the gigantic crab in the Japanese Court, of which I have 

 made mention always attack the liver, the dainty part of 

 a red mullet, first. Sometimes they eat more of the fish ; 

 but the liver invariably suffers first. We know this because 

 from the peculiar formation of the net the attacking crab is 

 almost invariably captured with its prey. 



But this fact of the preference of crabs and lobsters for 

 soft bait suggests another question. If the food which they 

 preferentially seek is of this soft nature why should they 

 be furnished with claws of such tremendous cutting and 

 crushing power ? Every crab and every lobster is furnished 

 with a claw (the smaller one) adapted for cutting as scissors 

 do, and another, the larger one, adapted for crushing ; and 



