CRUSTACEANS 



The carcinology of Lancashire is not of a commonplace character. On 

 the one hand it appeals for attention by the quaint simplicity of its earlier 

 records, on the other by the scientific ardour of its modern exponents. 

 Some of the circumstances, however, are rather tantalizing. The highest 

 forms of Crustacea are by no means copiously represented, in spite of the 

 extensive and diversified sea-board which might be expected to yield them. 

 But this seeming advantage is to a great extent neutralized by the volume of 

 freshwater and land debris poured into the bays and diffused along the shore 

 line from more than one considerable river.^ Moreover, the naturalists of 

 Liverpool University have found it expedient to push their marine investiga- 

 tions so far out into the Irish Sea that many of the rarer captures cannot be 

 specially credited to this county. Nevertheless its home waters have been 

 found to contain numerous species of more or less desirable Entomostraca, and 

 are still the field for valuable researches into the relations that exist, or should 

 exist, between crustaceans, molluscs, fishes, and men, an affectionate readiness 

 to eat one another being observable in all the groups, and only standing in 

 need of intelligent regulation. 



Reserving certain earlier authorities for a later stage of this discussion, it 

 will be convenient for us to begin with ' The Natural History of Lancashire, 

 Cheshire, and the Peak in Derbyshire, by Charles Leigh, Doctor of Physick,' 

 which was published at Oxford in the last year of the seventeenth century. 

 From the seventh and the ninth chapters, which treat respectively of fishes 

 and of birds, something may be gleaned which touches our present subject. 

 Concerning fishes Dr. Leigh says, ' The Curious here have a large Field of 

 Philosophy to range in, since both the Seas and Rivers in these Counties 

 present us almost with an infinite variety of these Creatures.' ^ In the vague 

 classification of that twilight era, the natural philosopher counted almost 

 everything as fish that came to his net, so long as it came out of the water 

 and was not of too insignificant a size. The whale-fish and the jelly-fish, 

 the star-fish and the crab-fish, ranged alongside with a miscellaneous host of 

 shell-fishes which might be either moUusca or Crustacea. It was not as yet 

 understood how incongruous the mixture of all these forms with true fishes 

 would appear to later eyes. But in truth from that very mixture we may 

 infer a carcinological fauna of considerable interest, as will hereafter be shown. 

 A few crustaceans are directly mentioned by Dr. Leigh, though only under 

 their vernacular names. Thus he observes, ' The Oyster and Lobster are very 

 common, and likewise the Shrimp and Prawn ; the Prawn is a Fish not much 

 unlike the Shrimp, but much larger and far better Meat, and in my thought 

 the most pleasing of any Shell-Fish whatever ; it generates in Eggs, and of 

 these it deposits an infinite number, which by a clammy matter it fastens to 

 the Rocks, and piles them one upon another, till they look like a Pyramid 



1 A. Scott, on Plankton Work, Trans. Liverpool Biol. Soc. xiii. 93 (1899). ^ Op. cit. Book i. p. 130. 



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