claws and feelers just outside, waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something
to turn up. To meet their views the crayfish catcher had cut a long willow
withe. From the tapering tip of this he had cut the wood, leaving the
bark, which had been carefully slit and the woody tip extracted from it.
This pendant of bark he had made into a running noose, and leaning over
the bank he worked it over the crayfish's claws and then snared them. It
was a neat adaptation of local means to an end; for if you think of it,
string would not have answered, because it would not remain rigid, and
wire would be too stiff for the job.

Crayfish catching, until lately one of the minor fisheries of the Thames,
is now a vanished industry. Ten years ago the banks of the river from
Staines to the upper waters at Cricklade were honeycombed with crayfish
holes, like sandmartins' nests in a railway cutting. These holes were
generally not more than eighteen inches below the normal water line of the
river. In winter when the stream was full fresh holes were dug higher up
the bank. In summer when the water fell these were deserted. The result
was that there were many times more holes than crayfish, and that for
hundreds of miles along the Thames and its tributaries these burrows made
a perforated border of about three feet deep. The almost complete
destruction of the crayfish was due to a disease, which first appeared
near Staines, and worked its way up the Thames, with as much method as
enteric fever worked its way down the Nile in the Egyptian Campaign after
Omdurman. The epidemic is well known in France, where a larger kind of
crayfish is reared artificially in ponds, and serves as the material for
_bisque d'ecrevisses_, and as the most elegant scarlet garnish for
cold and hot dishes of fish in Paris restaurants; but it was new to recent
experience of the Thames. Perhaps that is why its effects were so
disastrous. The neat little fresh-water lobsters turned almost as red as
if they had been boiled, crawled out of their holes, and died. Under some