LOBSTERS 



263 



The female lobster carries her eggs on the abdominal legs, to which 

 they are glued by a kind of cement. After the young emerge from the 

 egg, the zoese still cling to the mother for a little time. The lobster 

 moults eight times the first year, five times the second, and three times 

 the third year, after which the male moults twice and the female once a 

 year. It retires to some secluded spot for this operation, which is at- 

 tended with many dangers. The back splits open longitudinally and 

 the animal slowly withdraws, leaving the shell complete. In preparation 

 for moulting, the lime around the 

 contracted joints of the chelae is 

 absorbed, so that the soft flesh can 

 pass through. Any injury to a 

 limb at the time of moulting, or 

 which results from fighting or 

 from any accident, is repaired at 

 successive moultings, and a lost 

 member is replaced by a new, but 

 not always a perfect, one. 



Panulirus interruptus the spiny or rock-lobster. 



This species lives 



GENUS Panulirus 



P. interruptiis. This is the 

 California spiny lobster, rock- 

 lobster, or salt-water crawfish. It 

 differs from the common lobster 

 Homarus of the Atlantic coast in 

 having no large claws, the first 

 pair of feet being simple like the 

 rest, also in having antennae which 

 are enormously long and very 

 large at the base. The carapace 

 is beset with spines, and the lateral 

 margins of the abdominal segments end in spines, 

 among the rocks on the southern California coast. 



P. argus or amerlcanus resembles P. interruptus, and is found on 

 the coast of Florida. 



GENUS Scyllarus 



Scyttarus has a broad, almost square carapace, which is uneven 

 and coarsely granulated; the anterior corners are sharp, the 

 posterior ones rounded. The antenna? are curiously modified 

 into broad, flat, double plates reaching quite across the straight 

 anterior end of the carapace. The under scales of these modified 

 antennae are rounded and leaf-like, the upper ones are pointed. 

 The margins of the abdominal plates on the ventral side are 

 toathed, and on the upper side the first three sections have 



