CRUSTACEANS The carcinology of Lancashire is not of a commonplace character. On the one hand it appeals for attention by the quaint simplicity of its earlier records, on the other by the scientific ardour of its modern exponents. Some of the circumstances, however, are rather tantalizing. The highest forms of Crustacea are by no means copiously represented, in spite of the extensive and diversified sea-board which might be expected to yield them. But this seeming advantage is to a great extent neutralized by the volume of freshwater and land debris poured into the bays and diffused along the shore line from more than one considerable river.^ Moreover, the naturalists of Liverpool University have found it expedient to push their marine investiga- tions so far out into the Irish Sea that many of the rarer captures cannot be specially credited to this county. Nevertheless its home waters have been found to contain numerous species of more or less desirable Entomostraca, and are still the field for valuable researches into the relations that exist, or should exist, between crustaceans, molluscs, fishes, and men, an affectionate readiness to eat one another being observable in all the groups, and only standing in need of intelligent regulation. Reserving certain earlier authorities for a later stage of this discussion, it will be convenient for us to begin with ' The Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak in Derbyshire, by Charles Leigh, Doctor of Physick,' which was published at Oxford in the last year of the seventeenth century. From the seventh and the ninth chapters, which treat respectively of fishes and of birds, something may be gleaned which touches our present subject. Concerning fishes Dr. Leigh says, ' The Curious here have a large Field of Philosophy to range in, since both the Seas and Rivers in these Counties present us almost with an infinite variety of these Creatures.' ^ In the vague classification of that twilight era, the natural philosopher counted almost everything as fish that came to his net, so long as it came out of the water and was not of too insignificant a size. The whale-fish and the jelly-fish, the star-fish and the crab-fish, ranged alongside with a miscellaneous host of shell-fishes which might be either moUusca or Crustacea. It was not as yet understood how incongruous the mixture of all these forms with true fishes would appear to later eyes. But in truth from that very mixture we may infer a carcinological fauna of considerable interest, as will hereafter be shown. A few crustaceans are directly mentioned by Dr. Leigh, though only under their vernacular names. Thus he observes, ' The Oyster and Lobster are very common, and likewise the Shrimp and Prawn ; the Prawn is a Fish not much unlike the Shrimp, but much larger and far better Meat, and in my thought the most pleasing of any Shell-Fish whatever ; it generates in Eggs, and of these it deposits an infinite number, which by a clammy matter it fastens to the Rocks, and piles them one upon another, till they look like a Pyramid 1 A. Scott, on Plankton Work, Trans. Liverpool Biol. Soc. xiii. 93 (1899). ^ Op. cit. Book i. p. 130. 157
