CRUSTACEANS the lobsters caught off the Isle of Thanet.' ' Herein he is perhaps evincing a fine patriotism of the palate, rather than stating the result of actual comparison between Kentish lobsters and those of all other counties and countries. The Handbook to Dover says, ' Homarus vulgaris, the lobster, of course occurs, but it is far from common with us, although one of 1 2 lbs. weight was hooked and brought to the surface by an angler upon the Admiralty Pier some years ago. Nephrops norvegicus, the small red or Norway lobster, is much more equable in size, and never attains even the dimensions of vulgaris of but moderate growth.' Of these two species the more accurate scientific names have been already given. The species themselves run no risk of being confounded, the colours being very distinct, and the sharply four-sided hands of the chelipeds in Nephrops being very charac- teristic. In the neighbouring family of the Potamobiidae the river crayfish, Potamobius palUpes (Lereboullet), is distinguished from both the lobsters by having, among other differences, the last segment of the thorax or peraeon slightly movable instead of coalesced with the one preceding. All these three species agree in having the second and third pairs of legs chelate, though in a far feebler manner than the first pair which generally monopolize the title of chelipeds. They differ in several details affecting the rostrum, the ' scale ' of the second antennae, and other points. The occurrence of the river crayfish in Kent does not appear to have been hitherto recorded. My friend the Rev. R. Ashington Bullen, F.L.S., F.G.S., informs me that it occurs in the river Darent in Kent at Shoreham, and that he kept specimens alive in his vicarage there. Also my neighbour Mr. Rix assures me that in his boyhood it frequented the streamlet running through Bishops- down Park, Tunbridge Wells. Of the tribe Caridea, containing the majority of the world's shrimps and prawns, only four species are told of in this county. When England's Topographer says that ' Courtstairs, otherwise Pegwell Bay, is famed for shrimps, lobsters, turbot, soles, mullets, etc., and a most delicious flat fish, called a prill, very much sought after,' ^ his shrimps are probably Crangon vulgaris, Fabricius, but if not, the occur- rence of that species at Whitstable is vouched for by Messrs. Hardy and Oakden of the Quekett Microscopical Club, who also give the same locality as a habitat of Palaemon serratus. Dr. G. S. Brady incidentally mentions the finding of Crangon vulgaris at Gravesend.^ In the Appendix to his ' Report on the Fisheries of Nor jo Ik' Frank Buckland quotes, from ' Rules, Orders, and Ordnances for the Fisheries in Thames and Medway' under date 1785, the following decrees, ' White shrimps shall only be taken from the 24th day of August yearly to the 25th day of March ; Red shrimps shall be taken in the river Medway only, and • England's Topographer, or A New and Complete History of the County of Kent. By W. H. Ireland, p. loi (1828). » Op. cit. i. 536. The name ' prill ' has passed out of use in favour of ' brill.' > Trans. Linn. Soc. London, xxvi. pt. 2, 376 (1868). 247
