At this time, the females are found to be laden with eggs, of which from one to two hundred are attached beneath the tail, and look like a mass of minute berries (fig. [3], 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 crayfishes as an article of food, but 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 {11} demand for these delicacies; and hence, not only are large quantities imported from Germany, and elsewhere, but the artificial cultivation of crayfish has been successfully attempted on a considerable scale.
Crayfishes are caught in various ways; sometimes the fisherman simply wades in the water and drags them out of their burrows; more commonly, hoop-nets baited with frogs are let down into the water and rapidly drawn up, when there is reason to think that crayfish have been attracted to the bait; or fires are lighted on the banks at night, and the crayfish, which are attracted, like moths, to the unwonted illumination, are scooped out with the hand or with nets.
Thus far, our information respecting the crayfish is such as would be forced upon anyone who dealt in crayfishes, or lived in a district in which they were commonly used for food. It is common knowledge. Let us now try to push our acquaintance with what is to be learned about the animal a little further, so as to be able to give an account of its Natural History, such as might have been furnished by Buffon if he had dealt with the subject.
There is an inquiry which does not strictly lie within the province of physical science, and yet suggests itself naturally enough at the outset of a natural history.
The animal we are considering has two names, one common, Crayfish, the other technical, Astacus fluviatilis. How has it come by these two names, and why, {12} having a common English name for it already, should naturalists call it by another appellation derived from a foreign tongue?
The origin of the common name, “crayfish,” involves some curious questions of etymology, and indeed, of history. It might readily be supposed that the word “cray” had a meaning of its own, and qualified the substantive “fish”—as “jelly” and “cod” in “jellyfish” and “codfish.” But this certainly is not the case. The old English method of writing the word was “crevis” or “crevice,” and the “cray” is simply a phonetic spelling of the syllable “cre,” in which the “e” was formerly pronounced as all the world, except ourselves, now pronounce that vowel. While “fish” is the “vis” insensibly modified to suit our knowledge of the thing as an aquatic animal.
Now “crevis” is clearly one of two things. Either it is a modification of the French name “écrevisse,” or of the Low Dutch name “crevik,” by which the crayfish is known in these languages. The former derivation is that usually given, and, if it be correct, we must refer “crayfish” to the same category as “mutton,” “beef,” and “pork,” all of which are French equivalents, introduced by the Normans, for the “sheep’s flesh,” “ox flesh,” and “swine’s flesh,” of their English subjects. In this case, we should not have called a crayfish, a crayfish, except for the Norman conquest.
On the other hand, if “crevik” is the source of our {13} word, it may have come to us straight from the Angle and Saxon contingent of our mixed ancestry.