10 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COMMON CRAYFISH. 
not spared. Crayfishes, in fact, are guilty of canni- 
balism in its worst form ; and a French observer pa- 
thetically remarks, that, under certain circumstances, 
the males ‘“‘ méconnaissent les plus saints devoirs;” and, 
not content with mutilating or killing their spouses, 
after the fashion of animals of higher moral pretensions, 
_ they descend to the lowest depths of utilitarian turpitude, 
and finish by eating them. 
In the depth of winter, however, the most alert of 
crayfish can find little enough food; and hence, when 
they emerge from their hiding-places in the first warm 
days of spring, usually about March, the crayfishes are in 
poor condition. 
At this time, the females are found to be laden with 
eggs, of which from one to two hundred are attached be- 
neath the tail, and look like a mass of minute berries 
(fig. 3, B). In May or June, these eggs are hatched, and 
give rise to minute young, which are sometimes to be 
found attached beneath the tail of the mother, under 
whose protection they spend the first few days of their 
existence. 
In this country, we do not set much store upon cray- 
fishes as an article of food, but on the Continent, and 
especially in France, they are in great request. Paris 
alone, with its two millions of inhabitants, consumes 
annually from five to six millions of crayfishes, and pays 
about £16,000 for them. The natural productivity of the 
rivers of France has long been inadequate to supply the 
