10 %
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COMMON CRAYFISH.
not spared.
Crayfishes, in fact, are guilty of canni¬
balism in its worst form ; and a French observer pa¬ thetically
remarks, that, under certain circumstances,
the males “ meconnaissent les plus saints devoirsand, not content with mutilating or killing their spouses, after the fashion of animals of higher moral pretensions, they descend to the lowest depths of utilitarian turpitude, and finish by eating them. In the depth of winter, however, the most alert of crayfish can find little enough food; and hence, when they emerge from their hiding-places in the first warm days of spring, usually about March, the crayfishes are in poor condition. At this time, the females are found to be laden with eggs, of which from one to two hundred are attached be¬ neath the tail, and look like a mass of minute berries (fig. 8, B).
In May or June, these eggs are hatched, and
give rise to minute young, which are sometimes to be found attached beneath the tail of the mother, under whose protection they spend the first few days of their existence. In this country, we do not set much store upon cray¬ fishes as an article of food, hut on the Continent, and especially in France, they are in great request.
Paris
alone, with its two millions of inhabitants, consumes annually from five to six millions of crayfishes, and pays about £16,000 for them.
The natural productivity of the
rivers of France has long been inadequate to supply the
