# Crustacea. 



6679 



animals : they were protected because they were young, not because 

 they were offspring. 



But perhaps the fisherman of Goran Haven will not consent to this 

 interpretation, but claim that instinct to protect the young will be 

 greater in the parent than in any other, and of the two millions born 

 some thousands die, as many more are killed, and they that are 

 watched over are the youngest hatched, the proverbially most loved 

 by mothers. To support the idea I would give an instance in 

 a much lower form of the same class. It is told by Mr. Goodsir that 

 on one occasion, while examining a female spectre-shrimp (Caprella) 

 under the microscope, he found that her body was thickly covered 

 with young ones, being carried about from place to place by the 

 parent. And we know that the Arcturus, among the Isopoda, carries 

 its offspring about attached to their long antennae. Again, in the 

 leech we find the same maternal instinct ; and therefore, by parallel 

 reasoning, it is not impossible that the lobster may know its own 

 offspring. 



But these statements have drawn us off from the point we had in 

 view, w r hich is, to show that lobsters have the faculty of hearing ; thus, 

 according to the fisherman of Cornwall, the old lobster rattled its 

 claws, and the young ones fled at the signal to the protecting crevices 

 of the rocks. 



Whether sound, as known to the human ear, is appreciable to the 

 organs of animals that live in the water, is a thing much to be 

 doubted. Water is said to be a very excellent conductor of sound, 

 which it travels four times faster than it does air. A bell struck in a 

 diving-machine sounds with increased power ; but then the sound is 

 made in the compressed air, and not in the water ; and, as far as my 

 experience goes, no sound at all equalling that which we recognise 

 as such is capable of being made in the water. Knock two hard 

 substances together as you dive when taking a bath, and these will 

 be not heard.* Sound is a vibration of air : can it be supposed that 

 the vibration of water will produce the same result ? Sound, there- 

 fore, purely as such, is a questionable occurrence producible in 

 water. That an analogous phenomenon does take place is morally 

 certain ; but that it is a modified occurrence is evidenced from the 

 altered condition of the organs belonging to animals that live in 

 water. The otolithe in fish is not found in the ear of an animal 

 that lives out of water, and the true cochlea is not known in any that 



* Since this has been written, I have been informed that Gay Lusac rang a bell, 

 under water, that was distinctly heard nine miles across the Lake of Geneva. 



