XV.-Oft THE ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF THE LOBSTER/ 



[Translated from the Danish.] 



There is one point in the natural history of the common lobster 

 (Homarus vulgaris) which, till quite recently, has been but little known, 

 although the lobster is one of those crustaceans whose anatomy and physi- 

 ology have been studied most thoroughly, and that is the period of its 

 development from the time it begins to lead an independent life. The 

 roe which the female lobster carries under the back part of its body has 

 been repeatedly examined as far as that stage where the fully-developed 

 embryo is surrounded by the thin white of the egg ; in examiuing the 

 embryo it has been found that, as in other crustaceans, it is born as a 

 being unlike the grown lobster, and that during its later development it 

 undergoes metamorphoses. 



Prof. G. O. Sars of Christiania has recently endeavored to throw more 

 light on this comparatively dark period in the life of the lobster, and 

 the results of his investigation are contained in his treatise u Om Rum- 

 merens postembryonale JJdmTding^ published in the Christiana " Yidenslcabs- 

 Selskalbs Forhandlinger " for 1874. He, as well as Prof. Sidney I. Smith in 

 New Haven, who about the same time examined the development 

 of the American lobster, (Early Stages of the American Lobster, with 5 

 plates, by Sidney I. Smith, from the Transactions of the Connecticut 

 Academy, vol. ii,) has shown three larvse-stages in the development of 

 the lobster, and found that the young lobster after it is hatched spends 

 the first portion of its life near the surface of the water, where it be- 

 comes an easy prey to its many enemies, as, especially during the period 

 when it changes from a larvse to its adult form-, it is but little skilled 



in swimming. 



While the investigations of two naturalists have thus yielded new 

 and valuable contributions to the natural history of the lobster, inter- 

 esting facts regarding the young lobster's mode of life have been dis- 

 covered by other men. 



Along that part of the Norwegian coast where the lobster-fisheries 

 are carried on on a large scale, and where they become a source of con- 

 siderable income to the inhabitants, there are ample opportunities for 

 observing what an enormous number of young lobsters are destroyed 

 every year, partly by their natural enemies, and partly by the strong 

 wind from the sea which drives them on the coast, where they remaiu 

 on dry land when the tide has gone out. Several men in the district 



*0in Forsog med kunstig Udklaekniug af Hummer, ny rcekke=new series, in "Nor- 

 disk Tidsskrift for Fiskeri," ny Rcekke of Tidsskrift for Fiskeri, 2en Aargang, pp. 

 184-188, 1875. 



