A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



county. To credit the earlier of these to carcinology might not be 

 quite so fair. It sprang rather from an unnatural union in the circle of 

 the sciences, being got as a breeder might say by ichthyology out of 

 etymology. The story works out in this way. In the first place we 

 find the Messrs. Lysons stating in their well known work upon Great 

 Britain that ' the principal rivers of Berkshire are the Thames, the 

 Kennet, the Loddon, the Ock, the Lambourn, and the Auborn.' 1 

 Secondly, they declare that ' the fish of the Ock are pike, perch, 

 gudgeon, roach, dace, and crayfish.' 2 Thirdly, through other sources 

 we know that from the old German krebiz, which answers to the new 

 German krebs, came either independently or through the French 

 ecrevisse our old English crevisse. All in good time with our well 

 known linguistic skill we modified this into crayfish, and finally by this 

 trick of language writers, more bent on the pleasures of angling than on 

 the technicalities of systematic zoology, have been led to include a long- 

 tailed decapodous arthropod among vertebrate fishes. A more recent 

 authority, better acquainted with the proper classification of the cray- 

 fish, also guarantees its presence within these borders. But his warrant 

 too may be regarded as to some extent accidental, since it depends on 

 his mentioning the Kennet as one out of the many rivers of England in 

 which this species is found. Speaking of the sides of rivers in general, 

 Dr. Hamilton says : 



Of the Crustacea two will occasionally come under notice : 



1. The crayfish (Astacus fluviatilis) or the river lobster (Aitakos being the name 

 by which the Greeks called the lobster) is found in many of our rivers. 



Then after noticing its colour and the miscellaneous character of 

 its food he continues : 



Owing to some unknown cause, the crayfish has entirely died out from the 

 upper part of the river Kennet, and consequently the trout have lost a most important 

 food-supply ; and it is possible that the redness of the flesh for which the trout in this 

 river were noted, and which is not now so universal, was due in a great measure to 

 this crustacean, to the young of which trout are extremely partial. May not the 

 cause arise from the absence in the water of ingredients which were necessary for the 

 formation of the shell ? 



2. The freshwater shrimp (Gammarus pulex) is extremely common in all 

 springs and rivers, particularly where decaying vegetable matter has accumulated. It 

 generally keeps near the bottom and swims on its side with a kind of jerking motion, 

 and feeds on dead fishes or any other decaying matter. In some parts of the Kennet 

 this crustacean is to be found in great numbers. 8 



The second species of this reference will be discussed hereafter. 

 The first is more properly called Potamobius pallipes (Lereboullet). Not 

 every reader can be expected to care about the technical names of all 

 the animals which perhaps he captures with zeal, eats with satisfaction, 



1 Magna Britannia : being a precise Topographical Account of the several Counties of Great Britain, by 

 the Rev. Daniel Lysons, A.M., F.R.S., F.A. and L.S., and Samuel Lysons, Esq., F.R.S. and F.A.S. 

 Volume the First, containing Bedfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire (1805), p. 193. Auborn is 

 elsewhere spelt Aubourn. * Loc. cit. p. 196. 



3 The River-side Naturalist: Notes on the various forms of Life met with either in, on, or by the Water, ot 

 in its immediate vicinity, by Edward Hamilton, M.D., F.L.S., F.Z.S. (1890), pp. 296, 297. 



I2 4 



