234 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Toads are very plentiful in the Welsh St. Donats district, whilst 

 frogs are comparatively scarce ; thus the grass-snakes are often com- 

 pelled to eat toads through scarcity of their favourite food. In 

 captivity also T. natrix makes no trouble over eating small or half- 

 grown toads, though if given the choice the frog is selected. The 

 greatest destroyers of toad-life, however, are the fires which are 

 started every spring to burn the old bracken ; hundreds of charred 

 remains of poor Bufo are to be found scattered about after one of 

 these conflagrations. — Arthur Loveridge (Kilternan, Llandaff). 



CRUSTACEA. 



The Maximum Weight of the Edible Crab (?). — This question has 

 been recently raised in these pages by myself (1912, p. 272), and by 

 Mr. A. H. Patterson (ante, p. 77). My friend Mr. John Callenso, of 

 Penzance, has taken considerable trouble in procuring me authentic 

 information on this matter, and has just forwarded me a copy of 

 ' The Cornish Evening Tidings ' for May 29th last, containing a 

 report of a meeting of the Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee, held 

 at Truro on the previous day. At this meeting Mr. P. P. Williams 

 stated that one of the fishermen in his district recently caught a 

 Crab weighing 13 lb. 3 oz. — W. L. Distant. 



Immense Swarms of Euthemisto compressa on the Shore at 

 Redcar. — On Friday morning last (May 23rd) I went on to the sands, 

 the tide being low, and noticed that from high-tide mark to the 

 water's edge the shore was littered with these little creatures, evi- 

 dently left by the ebb ; in some places the sands had the appearance 

 of there having been a slight fall of snow, which had partly melted 

 and formed a kind of slush. I recognized that they were all Euthe- 

 misto compressa, and that there was an unusually large number of 

 them. The next day I went again on to the shore, and then found 

 that there had been a most extraordinary influx of the crustaceans on 

 the previous tide ; the shore was practically covered with them, and 

 at high-water mark they were in such quantities that they resembled 

 small snowdrifts several inches in depth, and so conspicuous as to be 

 easily noticeable at a distance of over a quarter of a mile. All the 

 little pools on the beach and on the rocks were swarming with them, 

 and they were generally swimming on their sides (this is the first 

 time I have seen them swimming). Those in the drifts and on the 

 wet places of the sands were all alive. On either side of Redcar — to 

 Saltburn on the east and Teesmouth on the west — a similar state of 

 the shore prevailed. I am informed that one of the fishermen raked 



