CRUSTACEANS 



The lobster belongs to the family Nephropsidae, so called from Nephrops 

 norwegicus (Linn.), the Norway lobster, common in northern waters, but 

 apparently not definitely recorded from any actual point in this county. The 

 nearly allied family of the Fotamobiidce supplies the river crayfish, Fotamobius 

 pallipes (LerebouUet), often less accurately called Astacus [fluviatilis, about 

 which Huxley wrote his celebrated book. The Crayfish^ as an introduction to 

 the study of zoology. It is rather singular that his inquiries as to the dis- 

 tribution of this species- in England should have been comparatively unsuc- 

 cessful. In his sixth chapter, after noticing that crayfishes are abundant in 

 some of our rivers, he goes on to remark that ' they appear to be absent from 

 many others,' and says, ' I cannot hear of any, for example, in the Cam or 

 the Ouse, on the east, or in the rivers of Lancashire and Cheshire, on the 

 west.' In regard to one of these localities, however, his knowledge was 

 subsequently widened by a letter from ' Giggleswick School, near Settle, 

 Yorkshire, 28th June, 1886,' which reads as follows : ' Dear Prof. Huxley, I 

 have read in Chapter VI. of your book on the crayfish that you had not heard 

 of any in the rivers of Lancashire. Yesterday I went to Ling-Gill one of 

 the first affluents of Ribble (which even in Yorkshire we count as a Lanca- 

 shire river) and I am trying to keep them alive. I shall be glad to send you 

 one if you will tell me where to send it. Yours faithfully, Arthur Style.' 

 Though from the wording of the letter this intelligent and observant school- 

 boy appears to be offering Huxley one of the affluents of the Ribble, it is 

 clear that Huxley accepted the spirit of the communication as a trustworthy 

 assurance that the river crayfish had been found in Lancashire. The letter 

 itself was given to me on 10 April, 1902, by my lamented friend, the late 

 Professor G. B. Howes, F.R.S., Huxley's assistant and successor at the Royal 

 CoUege of Science. Professor Howes assured me that the letter was taken 

 from Huxley's own copy of his book, and it still bears the marks of an honour- 

 able adhesion. 



The tribe Caridea is a great group, including not all, but the majority 

 of the prawns and shrimps that have commercial value, along with many 

 that from smallness or rarity do not influence our markets. This tribe 

 occupies a prominent place in the marine zoology of Lancashire, although 

 only seven or eight species can be definitely claimed for its coasts, and only 

 two or three of these have any mercantile importance. In the family 

 Crangonidae there are two species, Crangon vulgaris (Fabricius), emphatically 

 the common shrimp, perhaps in England the most familiarly known of all 

 crustaceans, and Crangon allmanni (Kinahan), the channel-tailed shrimp, dis- 

 tinguished from the other by the longitudinal dorsal groove or channel in the 

 penultimate segment of the tail. Professor Herdman, in the Fifth Annual 

 i?e/or/ of the Liverpool Biological Station, speaking of the year 1891, says, 

 ' In January, in all localities, the shrimps were smaller than in the previous 

 years ; the weather was colder, frosty.' Mr. Ascroft writes from Lytham in 

 February ' that there are a great number of Crangon allmani among the 

 shrimps.'^ Only a naturalist would be likely to notice the difference, and 

 probably neither a naturalist nor an epicure could tell one species from 

 another by his palate. With the capture of these shrimps some unexpectedly 

 perplexing questions are connected. The ground that suits the shrimps is 



1 'Trans. Liverp. Biol. Soc. vi. 25 (1892). 

 I 161 21 



