A HISTORY OF NORFOLK The following remarks by the inspector himself, besides specifying the crab intended, give some useful information in regard to its habitat : ' The crab and lobster fisheries of Norfolk, I ascertain, have their headquarters at Cromer, Sherringham, Runton, Weybourne, and the adjoining villages situated along the coast along the extreme north of the county of Norfolk. The crab pots are set out to sea from the foreshore to the distance of about two miles. The extent of the united Cromer and Sherringham fisheries is about eight and a quarter miles long by two wide. The bottom of this district consists of large flints, with a large portion of marl, in which are found occasional large rocks from one hundredweight to four hundredweight each. ' The sea bottom is very irregular, so that a trawl net cannot be used. The whole of this sixteen square miles is a vast forest of seaweed, and is naturally a splendid breeding and feeding place for crabs. My observations in these pages are entirely confined to the edible crab [Cancer pagurus), and do not include the green crabs (locally called Kittawiches), or other kinds of crabs. ' After a limit of two miles from the shore, the weeds and rocks begin to gradually disappear, and the ground begins to be what is called " spotty," i.e. rock alternating with smooth ground. The crabs are scarce in this spotty ground.' ' Amid the disputes of philosophers as to whether two and two always make four, or may occasionally make five, it is of interest to learn that in the Cromer district six score cast of crabs are called a hundred, and, as two crabs go to a cast, two hundred and forty in all will go to the ' hundred.' At this rate it is not twice two, but twice six, that make five. The only species which Buckland mentions by its scientific name is Cancer pagurus (Linn.). In England scarcely any other species now comes into the market, so that to many persons a crab means this species and this alone. But in other parts of the world, where this is unknown or unprocurable, there are many different species equally or more appre- ciated for human food. Our own favourite belongs to the Cyclometopa, that is, to the arch-fronted tribe of the Brachyura. So also do the green crabs or kittawiches, if we may assume that by those names are intended the common shore crab, Carcinus manas (Linn,). In the German report above referred to four other crabs of this tribe are recorded from the coast of Norfolk. Two of these, Pilumnus hirtellus (Linn.), the bristly crab, and Pirimela denticulata (Montagu), which Adam White calls 'the toothed Pirimela,' were taken by the Pommerania off the coast of Norfolk, at a depth of twelve fathoms, on sand.' The bristly Pilumnus is not uncommon. It belongs to a genus including an immense number of hairy-coated small species, which are widely distributed over the seas of the world. It has the tail part seven-jointed in both sexes. The still smaller Pirimela is comparatively rare, but nevertheless to be met with on many of the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. Its colour is variable,
- Report, p. 50. * Nordseefahrt der Pommerania, p. 291.
184
