CRUSTACEANS In maritime counties this branch of our fauna forces itself upon the attention of the most unobservant. In many inland districts, on the other hand, the keenest students of natural history have suffered it to lie in absolute neglect. Staffordshire, therefore, is rather exception- ally fortunate in having been long exempt from this indifference. The earlier notices, it is true, have their scientific interest suffused with an antiquarian glamour. At many points also they attest the presence of crustaceans in the bogs and streams of the county by implication rather than by express mention of any particular genera and species. Amongst these remote authorities The Natural History of Staffordshire, by Robert Plot, LL.D., Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and professor of chemistry in the University of Oxford, has the first claim on our consideration. For a predominantly aquatic group of animals we must welcome Plot's quaint conclusion in dealing with the hydrography of the shire : All which summ'd up together, we find at the foot of the account, that it is water'd with no less than 24 Rivers of name, though a Mediterranean county ; besides the endless number of anonymous RinJles and small brooks that must needs attend them ; a number perhaps that very few Countries of the like extent can be found to surpass, if any that equals it. 1 It is, in fact, in anonymous rindles and small pools that some species of Entomostraca are most surely obtained. For direct record, however, of any crustacean, Plot must be consulted in a part of his work which, with our modern views of classification, would be thought very unlikely to supply it. The heading 'Of Brutes' to the chapter in question is more concise than dis- criminating. ' Under the title of Brute!,' he says, ' I comprehend (as in Oxfordshire) all Animals whatever that have sense and locomotion, except the rational, whether they are the inhabitants of the Air, Water, or Earth, such as Birds, Insects, Fishes, Reptiles, and Quadrupeds. * A long period indeed elapsed before either popular or scientific opinion effectively disentangled Crustacea from the insects and fishes of this miscellaneous host. After a discussion of the burbot or birdbolt, sometimes called the nonsuch because of its rarity, and provisionally identified with Mustela Jluviatilis, Plot remarks : But though I heard only of this single fish that I think undescribed (for that there are a sort of Crevices in the stream that passes by Overend and Longdon, that will not boile red, is only accidental, as was shown before in Oxfordshire) yet I was informed of divers very unusual observations, concerning scaled, as well as smooth fish. 3 The crevices mentioned in the queer parenthesis are obviously the common river crayfish, properly called Potamobius pallipcs (Lereboullet). In his next section Plot says : There are other fish, too, both of the scaled and shell'd kinds, that will live and breed in places very uncommon to their species, thus Gudgeons and Crevices live well and breed in the pooles at Bentley and thrive to a just magnitude, but then these ponds are always fedd with Springs. In the distinction between scaled fishes on the one hand and smooth or shelled fishes on the other, there seems to be a glimmering of suspicion that, though the crevice with its polished coat was just as much a fish as the barbel and the carp, it was still a fish with a difference. That the Entomostraca parasitic on carp and other freshwater fishes did not attract Plot's attention is a definite loss, as we are left without any of the unusual observations upon them which he might otherwise have reported. He discusses at much length the brine-pits of Staffordshire, but takes no notice of the so-called brine-worm, Artemia salina (Linn.), once so abundant at Lymington, 1 Op. cit. chap. 2, 21, p. 43 (1686). * Ibid. chap. 7, p. 228. 3 Ibid. 29, p. 241. 125
