CRUSTACEANS 



the lobsters caught off the Isle of Thanet.' ' Herein he is perhaps 

 evincing a fine patriotism of the palate, rather than stating the result of 

 actual comparison between Kentish lobsters and those of all other 

 counties and countries. The Handbook to Dover says, ' Homarus vulgaris, 

 the lobster, of course occurs, but it is far from common with us, 

 although one of 1 2 lbs. weight was hooked and brought to the surface 

 by an angler upon the Admiralty Pier some years ago. Nephrops 

 norvegicus, the small red or Norway lobster, is much more equable in 

 size, and never attains even the dimensions of vulgaris of but moderate 

 growth.' Of these two species the more accurate scientific names 

 have been already given. The species themselves run no risk of 

 being confounded, the colours being very distinct, and the sharply 

 four-sided hands of the chelipeds in Nephrops being very charac- 

 teristic. In the neighbouring family of the Potamobiidae the 

 river crayfish, Potamobius palUpes (Lereboullet), is distinguished from 

 both the lobsters by having, among other differences, the last segment 

 of the thorax or peraeon slightly movable instead of coalesced with 

 the one preceding. All these three species agree in having the second 

 and third pairs of legs chelate, though in a far feebler manner than the 

 first pair which generally monopolize the title of chelipeds. They 

 differ in several details affecting the rostrum, the ' scale ' of the second 

 antennae, and other points. The occurrence of the river crayfish in 

 Kent does not appear to have been hitherto recorded. My friend the 

 Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, F.L.S., F.G.S., informs me that it occurs in 

 the river Darent in Kent at Shoreham, and that he kept specimens 

 alive in his vicarage there. Also my neighbour Mr. Rix assures me 

 that in his boyhood it frequented the streamlet running through Bishops- 

 down Park, Tunbridge Wells. 



Of the tribe Caridea, containing the majority of the world's 

 shrimps and prawns, only four species are told of in this county. 

 When England's Topographer says that ' Courtstairs, otherwise Pegwell 

 Bay, is famed for shrimps, lobsters, turbot, soles, mullets, etc., and a 

 most delicious flat fish, called a prill, very much sought after,' ^ his 

 shrimps are probably Crangon vulgaris, Fabricius, but if not, the occur- 

 rence of that species at Whitstable is vouched for by Messrs. Hardy 

 and Oakden of the Quekett Microscopical Club, who also give the 

 same locality as a habitat of Palaemon serratus. Dr. G. S. Brady 

 incidentally mentions the finding of Crangon vulgaris at Gravesend.^ In 

 the Appendix to his ' Report on the Fisheries of Nor jo Ik' Frank Buckland 

 quotes, from ' Rules, Orders, and Ordnances for the Fisheries in Thames 

 and Medway' under date 1785, the following decrees, ' White shrimps 

 shall only be taken from the 24th day of August yearly to the 25th day 

 of March ; Red shrimps shall be taken in the river Medway only, and 



• England's Topographer, or A New and Complete History of the County of Kent. By W. H. Ireland, 

 p. loi (1828). 



» Op. cit. i. 536. The name ' prill ' has passed out of use in favour of ' brill.' 

 > Trans. Linn. Soc. London, xxvi. pt. 2, 376 (1868). 

 247 



