CRUSTACEANS The famous ' broads ' and numerous streams of the county make it a highly promising region for freshwater Entomostraca, and good ob- servers have established the fact that within its borders these pigmies flourish and abound. For marine Crustacea its conditions are not quite so favourable. It can boast, indeed, of an extensive seaboard, and a situation open to the great expanse of the North Sea, without being so far northerly as to exclude occasional migrants from the warmer waters of the English Channel. On the other hand, the coast line is not broken up into those sheltering inlets which foster so many aquatic invertebrates. The temperature of the water is not of that equable character which makes life easy and serene. At Yarmouth the curious cancelling of the tides by southern ebb meeting northern flow, and vice versa, entails an indirect disadvantage. There is no great tract of shore, covered at times by the sea and at fortnightly intervals left bare, such as in some districts is so fruitful in creatures and so attractive to the naturalist. Conse- quently English collectors of Crustacea have not much frequented this station, and for several of our records relating to the coast of Norfolk we are indebted to a German exploration of the North Sea, carried out some forty years ago on board the steamship Pommerania. The Malacostraca were the subject of a report by Dr. A. Metzger in the year 1875. Of the same date, however, we have a Report of the Fisheries of Norfolk, especially Crabs, Lobsters, Herrings, and the Broads, by Frank Buckland, inspector of Salmon Fisheries. Ordered, by the Flouse of Commons, to be printed, 11 August, 1875. From the title one might be inclined to suppose that herrings and broads were companion fishes. From the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 Mr. Buckland draws the conclusion that ' a crab, therefore, is now a sea fish,' and he might have added that, by pleasure of Parliament, so also is a periwinkle. Un- disturbed by such definitions, the Report adduces evidence that at Lynn there are ' no crabs or lobsters,' * and that there are ' no edible crabs or lobsters ' at Wells, which is about twenty-nine miles east of Lynn,* but that in Lynn Harbour, and just below St. German's Bridge, shrimps have been caught in some profusion.^ Also it appears that at Wells, ' shrimps, since the new establishment was made to enclose the western salt marshes, have been very scarce in the harbour.'* Small crabs, three inches or less across the back, are locally called toggs or shortcrabs, and these are very useful for bait ; but to their wholesale destruction some of the fishermen attributed a general decline in the crab-catching industry.* ^ Report, p. 30. * Ibid, p. 48. ' Ibid. p. 40. * Ibid. p. 48.
- Ibid. p. 5 1 . On the subsequent improvement of that industry see ' Life and Letters
of Thomas Henry Huxley,* vol. ii. p. 24, 1900. 183
