A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE inverted, and hang like icicles on the Verge of a Penthouse.' ^ Here we have at least three (if not four) species and as many genera of crustaceans indicated. A presumption also that other members of the same class were observable in the w^aters of the county arises from Dr. Leigh's various records of star-fishes, of ' blebs ' or jelly-fishes, of salmon abounding in the rivers Ribble, Lune, Wire or Wyre, and Mersey, as well as from his discussion of the barnacle goose and his statement that ' sometimes we have Whales and Sturgeons.' No one, perhaps, would have been more surprised than Dr. Leigh himself to learn that the parasitic or semi-parasitic companions of his multifarious ' fishes ' could be lawfully and properly classed along with the shrimp and the prawn. His apparently strange couphng together of the oyster and the lobster will be explained, and in a certain sense justified, later on. The different parasitic organisms will also be noticed under the appropriate heads of classification. But the curious will have to range in rather a wide field of philosophy before they can find prawns which deposit their eggs on the rocks in inverted pyramids or pendent like icicles. For Lancashire prawns the process is undoubtedly mythical, whatever the marine substance may have been which led Dr. Leigh to imagine it. From the above-mentioned more or less garrulous work at the opening of the eighteenth century to the prim catalogue by Isaac Byerley at the middle of the nineteenth, is a scientific stride of considerable importance. Yet, so far as the Crustacea are concerned, Byerley's Fauna of Liverpool is not a little disappointing to a student of Lancashire zoology, since most of the localities specified are outside the boundaries of the county. That the author's list of species is trustworthy depends not so much on any intrinsic evidence, as on the fact that the animals named are common and easily identified, and on the circumstance that most of them have been subsequently again observed by expert investigators of the same region. In contrast to several other maritime counties of England, Lancashire allows the Malacostraca, which are of primary rank in the class, to take a somewhat secondary place in its fauna. Especially, as already suggested, the Brachyura or crabs, which are the leading members of the leading sub- class, are here but poorly represented. The ' arch-fronted ' Cyclometopa supply in the family Cancridse the well-known Cancer pagurus (Linn.), the great eatable crab, of which Byerley says that it is ' rather a plentiful species here, but seldom of large size ' ; ' in the family Portunidas, Carcinus manas (Linn.), the common shore crab, mentioned by Byerley as ' very common upon the shores everywhere,' ' and frequently referred to in the reports of the Liverpool Marine Biology Committee; Portunus depurator (Linn.), the cleanser swimming crab, according to Byerley ' common both in tide pools and in deeper water,' and according to A. O. Walker ' abundant everywhere ; generally on stony ground 3 to 7 fath. ' ; * Folybius henslowii (Leach), men- tioned incidentally by Professor Herdman as by universal consent one of the worst enemies of the shrimp ; ^ and, lastly, in the family Corystidas, Corystes cassivelaunus (Pennant), the masked crab, which A. O. Walker speaks of as ' not uncommon on sandy ground at various depths and between tide marks throughout the district,' ^ These five crabs are easily discriminated one from 1 Loc. cit. p. 1 34. s Op. cit. p. 51 (1854). 8 Ibid.
- Trans. Biol. Sec. Liverpool, vi. 97 (1892). ° Loc. cit. p. 25. * Loc. cit. p. 97.
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