CUtrSTACEA. 
65 
it is essential, and I have been informed that when a vessel has 
been detained in harbom-, it has been found necessary to go to 
the open sea and bach to renew the water in the hold that the 
cargo may be kept alive. 
The master of the lobster smack has a method of deabng with 
the fisherman that must not a little redound to his -- ^va- 
tage. If the lobster exceeds the length of eleven inches from 
suLt to tail it is considered a full size fish or tale, of 
price was (in 1833) 10s. per dozen; but all that fall short 
length are regarded as only amounting to a e p c 
A crab of the largest size can pass for no more than haH the 
value of a fuU lobster, but if less than eight inches across the 
shell or carapace, they are half of a fuU or tale crab, and non 
are admitted that measure less than four inches. 
Crab fishing is foUowed chiefly by the poorer fisherman, or by 
those whose activity has given way to the infirmities • 
was formerly more profitable than now and seems ^ be ^adu- 
ally decreasing. The lobster smacks that pass along the Cornish 
coast coUecting the produce of the fishing f 
proceeding weeks, are mostly from Southampton, but the dest 
ation of the cargo seems to be the port of London. 
In the report for 1843, of the Eoyal Polytechnic Society, Mr. 
Couch published a paper on the process of exuviation in cr^s 
and lobsters, and again in the report of the same society for 
1854, he published “ a particular description of some circum- 
stanees hitherto little known, connected with the process of 
exuviation in the common edible crab m the latter cominuni- 
cation he demonstrated the manner in which the larger claws 
split previously to the old shell being cast. 
In the report of the recent commission (1877) on cr^s and 
lobsters, the evidence went to prove that there was no decrease 
ia the quantity of animals taken but that there is a large e- 
mand, Ld a ^oater number of fishermen. The price of crabs 
is now (1877) 15s. per doz. for males, and 3s. per doz. for females. 
Caxcee x^BOCumAivB— Couch, Cornish Fauna, 1838, p 69-70. 
“Carapace large, oval, somewhat elevated in the middle; points 
of the nippers not spoon-shaped. Legs short, compressed those 
^hich ai4 prehensile fimiished above with a crest formed of a 
