364 



severs the connection of the claw with the body at the 

 shoulder the joint next the body by an act of its own 

 will, and that Nature regularly and repeatedly (but on 

 each occasion with less effect) reproduces the claw on a 

 smaller scale than the one shot off. It seems probable 

 that if the large claw was necessary to the feeding of the 

 animal Nature would rather seek to cure an injury to it 

 than let the animal discard it altogether; but the crab 

 makes no two ways about it. Within a second of the 

 injury received the whole limb is discarded ; and lobsters 

 are much more apt to do this than crabs. This known 

 difference in the temper of the two came out once very 

 funnily whilst I was fishing. We value lobster much more 

 than we do crab. A crab, when it catches you, holds on 

 with a crush much harder than does the lobster. An old 

 boatman of mine once, whilst landing a lobster, got caught 

 by it over the thumb. Any violent act of resentment would 

 have made the lobster shoot its claw ; and I looked round 

 just in time to see the boatman balancing the lobster up 

 and down from the gunwale of the boat, bearing the pain 

 of the pinch, and apostrophising it with " Ef thee'd a-ben a 

 crab I'd ha' smashed thee agen the gunnel." 



But, having dealt with the food of crustaceans, we will 

 deal with the crustaceans as food. Many of the smaller 

 species all, in fact are utilised as food by fish of several 

 species (families, I may say). Thus the family of the cod 

 (Gadidce), and of the flat-fish (Pleuronectidce), feed largely 

 on stalk-eyed crustaceans, and so, indirectly, make them 

 available to us as food. So well is this fact known amongst 

 those interested in the subject that no one of them would 

 permit the stomach of a cod or a dorse, and some other 

 allied species, to be thrown away without a careful over- 

 hauling first. The first recorded specimen of the rare 



