CRUSTACEANS The lobster belongs to the family Nephropsidae, so called from Nephrops norwegicus (Linn.), the Norway lobster, common in northern waters, but apparently not definitely recorded from any actual point in this county. The nearly allied family of the Fotamobiidce supplies the river crayfish, Fotamobius pallipes (LerebouUet), often less accurately called Astacus [fluviatilis, about which Huxley wrote his celebrated book. The Crayfish^ as an introduction to the study of zoology. It is rather singular that his inquiries as to the dis- tribution of this species- in England should have been comparatively unsuc- cessful. In his sixth chapter, after noticing that crayfishes are abundant in some of our rivers, he goes on to remark that ' they appear to be absent from many others,' and says, ' I cannot hear of any, for example, in the Cam or the Ouse, on the east, or in the rivers of Lancashire and Cheshire, on the west.' In regard to one of these localities, however, his knowledge was subsequently widened by a letter from ' Giggleswick School, near Settle, Yorkshire, 28th June, 1886,' which reads as follows : ' Dear Prof. Huxley, I have read in Chapter VI. of your book on the crayfish that you had not heard of any in the rivers of Lancashire. Yesterday I went to Ling-Gill one of the first affluents of Ribble (which even in Yorkshire we count as a Lanca- shire river) and I am trying to keep them alive. I shall be glad to send you one if you will tell me where to send it. Yours faithfully, Arthur Style.' Though from the wording of the letter this intelligent and observant school- boy appears to be offering Huxley one of the affluents of the Ribble, it is clear that Huxley accepted the spirit of the communication as a trustworthy assurance that the river crayfish had been found in Lancashire. The letter itself was given to me on 10 April, 1902, by my lamented friend, the late Professor G. B. Howes, F.R.S., Huxley's assistant and successor at the Royal CoUege of Science. Professor Howes assured me that the letter was taken from Huxley's own copy of his book, and it still bears the marks of an honour- able adhesion. The tribe Caridea is a great group, including not all, but the majority of the prawns and shrimps that have commercial value, along with many that from smallness or rarity do not influence our markets. This tribe occupies a prominent place in the marine zoology of Lancashire, although only seven or eight species can be definitely claimed for its coasts, and only two or three of these have any mercantile importance. In the family Crangonidae there are two species, Crangon vulgaris (Fabricius), emphatically the common shrimp, perhaps in England the most familiarly known of all crustaceans, and Crangon allmanni (Kinahan), the channel-tailed shrimp, dis- tinguished from the other by the longitudinal dorsal groove or channel in the penultimate segment of the tail. Professor Herdman, in the Fifth Annual i?e/or/ of the Liverpool Biological Station, speaking of the year 1891, says, ' In January, in all localities, the shrimps were smaller than in the previous years ; the weather was colder, frosty.' Mr. Ascroft writes from Lytham in February ' that there are a great number of Crangon allmani among the shrimps.'^ Only a naturalist would be likely to notice the difference, and probably neither a naturalist nor an epicure could tell one species from another by his palate. With the capture of these shrimps some unexpectedly perplexing questions are connected. The ground that suits the shrimps is 1 'Trans. Liverp. Biol. Soc. vi. 25 (1892). I 161 21
