LOBSTER-COMMEECE. 269 



visitors cannot do better tlian engage the services of some 

 strong fisher youth to act as guide in such perambulations as 

 they may make on the beach. There are few seaside places 

 where the natives cannot guide strangers to rock pools and 

 picturesque nooks teeming with materials for studying th4 

 wonders of the shore. 



Lobsters are collected and sent to London from all parts of 

 the Scottish shore. I have seen on the Sutherland and other 

 coasts perforated floating chests filled with them. They were 

 kept till called for by the welled smacks, which generally make 

 the circuit of the coasts once a week, taking up all the lobsters 

 or crabs they can get, and carrying them alive to London. 

 From the Durness shores alone as many as from six to eight 

 thousand lobsters have been collected in the course of a single 

 summer, and sold, big or little, at threepence each to the buyers. 

 The lobsters taken on the north-east coast of Scotland and at 

 Orkney are now packed in seaweed and sent in boxes to London 

 by railway. Lobsters, have not been so plentiful, it is thought, 

 in the Orkney Islands of late years; but a large trade has 

 been done in them since the railway was opened from Aber- 

 deen — at all events, the prices of lobsters are double what 

 they used to be in the time of the welled smacks alluded to 

 above. The fisher-folks of Orkney confess that the trade in 

 lobsters pays them well. At some places in Scotland lobster- 

 fishing is pursued at great risk. Among the groups of rocky 

 islands on the west coast of Scotland, it is often a work of 

 great danger to set the lobster-pots, and often enough after 

 being set they cannot again be reached, in consequence of 

 sudden squalls, till many days have elapsed; so that, if the 

 remuneration for the labour is good, it is sometimes very hardly 

 earned. 



AU kinds of crustaceans can be kept alive at the place of 

 capture till " wanted " — that is, till the welled vessel which 

 carries them to London or Liverpool arrives — by simply storing 

 them in a large perforated wooden box anchored in a con- 

 venient place. Nor must it be supposed that the acute London 

 dealers allow too many lobsters to be brought to market at 

 once; the supply is governed by the demand, and the stock 

 kept in large store-boxes at convenient places down the river, 

 where the sear-water is strong and the liquid filth of London 

 harmless. But these old-fashioned store-boxes will, no doubt, 

 be speedily superseded by the construction of artificial store- 



