A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

THE PRAWN’S ARMS.

An elegant creature is the common prawn, or rock-shrimp, as the fishermen designate him, by way of distinction from another sapid crustacean that inhabits these shores. His armour of proof, composed of plates that slide so smoothly one under another, sustains the most lustrous polish, and is ever subject to the animal’s efforts to keep it so; for, whenever he has a moment’s leisure from more pressing avocations, he is constantly engaged in cleaning it with the brushes which those slender fore-limbs of his carry. Like a true soldier, like a knight of chivalry, the Prawn lives, eats, sleeps in armour. How completely is his body encased in defensive mail; and he carries his tempered weapon too. Look at the serrate sword which he always points at the foe whom he faces! Who would rashly provoke such a weapon as this? Stiff and firm in substance, long, pointed, two-edged, keen on both edges, curved sabre-like, and cut into acute teeth; it does seem a most formidable affair: and yet, truth to tell, I do not know what use the owner makes of it. Though I have been for many years in the practice of keeping these elegant animals in my aquaria, I have never seen one smite a foe with his two-edged sword. Perhaps like the cane over the looking-glass in a nursery, its mere presence is sufficient to keep in awe encroaching enemies, whose hearts sink when they behold the sharp-toothed weapon.

Exquisitely painted is the Prawn. His ground colour is semi-pellucid olive-grey, on which transverse lines of black are drawn; and specks and dashes of sparkling white, symmetrically arranged and well defined, are scattered here and there, especially upon the broad swimming plates that serve as his principal instruments of locomotion. His limbs, too, are ringed with blue and orange, a felicitous combination!

I have just alluded to the tail as a motive power. It is a very curious organ, consisting of five plates, so hinged that they can play over each other, or be spread out in shape of a fan, and each plate beset on its edges with a most delicate fringe of stiff bristles. To see its use, you have only to approach the animal. He instantly darts away with force; all the while, however, keeping his face to the foe, as becomes a soldier so armed. Now this retrocessive power is his great cheval de bataille. When gently exploring, he crawls among the weeds on the tips of his long feet; when swimming at ease, he glides gracefully along by the rapid paddling of the false feet, of which he carries five pairs beneath his abdomen. But when alarmed, he forcibly throws forward this plated tail, expanded to the utmost, bending the last joints of the body from the hump on his back, and thus strikes a powerful forward blow on the water, by the impact of which the whole prawn is jerked backward to a distance of several inches.

But he is gone; and it were useless to look for him any more in this wilderness of sea-weeds, and amid the cavernous recesses of those rocky ledges, where he enjoys ample means of retreat and concealment. For, even if you did catch a momentary glimpse of him again, it would be only as he darts from one shelter to another, and he would presently be far out of your reach in the obscurity of some inexplorable hole.

Let us turn to the beach and follow the water’s edge. Let us see what this fisherman is so busy about, and what that horse is doing as he paces backward and forward belly-deep in the sea, from one end of the beach to the other, then retracing his steps, as if he were ploughing the shallows. And why does the fisherman watch the horse so attentively? Hark! what says he? He shouts to the diminutive urchin that rides the horse to come in; and now he eagerly goes down to the edge of the sea, as the beast and his little rider come ashore. We will go and see.

KEER-DRAG.

The man is civil and communicative, and lets us into the whole secret; though now indeed that we are on the spot, it is sufficiently patent. The horse draws behind him an implement called a keer-drag; a net, which is stretched upon an oblong iron frame, that forms its mouth. Behind, the net tapers to a point, but is left open there in the making, and only tied with a string. The iron frame keeps the net-mouth open, and being attached by a bridle to a rope, which is fastened to the horse’s harness, scrapes the sea-bottom as he proceeds; whatever is collected passing into the net, and accumulating at the narrow point.

Now the shallows just here are alive with swarms of another edible species of crustacea, the Shrimp,[52] par excellence; or, as the people here say, the sand shrimp, to distinguish it from the prawn, which, as I have observed, they call the rock shrimp. And this sand shrimp finds a ready sale in the Torquay market; the fisherman getting, as he tells us, a shilling a quart from the fishmongers.

The horse, doubtless nothing loath, for his toil must be great, wading on soft sand in three feet of water, and dragging that heavy apparatus behind him, walks to dry land, where, as soon as the keer-drag is ashore, the man seizes it, cries “whow!” to the obedient animal, and, having spread a cloth on the sand, proceeds to untie the string, and pour out on the cloth the struggling contents. “It is a very good haul,” says the fellow; “there’s more nor two quart there!” So, being in a good humour, and naturally civil besides, we venture to propound a bargain; that, for a small coin of the realm, we may be allowed to pick out all the “rubbish;” i.e., everything that is not a shrimp, and convey it to our own private reservoirs; a pleasant agreement for both parties; for the net gathers many curious creatures of great interest to the naturalist, though of no value whatever to the fisherman. Shrimps, however, are the staple; there are probably a hundred of these to one of all other kinds, lumping these latter all together. And very fine these shrimps are. Mr. Bell gives two inches and a half as the total length of the species,[53] and I do not remember that I ever before saw one that exceeded that size: but here, the great majority are upwards of three inches; and a very considerable number are full three and a half. They are mostly females loaded with spawn, which they carry entangled among the false feet beneath the body.