WHAT WE KNOW OF THE LOBSTER. 285 



Solomon, decided a bet on the weight of these crustaceans against the man who 

 brought sworn testimony of old fishermen, who remembered lobsters of 40 pounds, by 

 saying "affidavits are not lobsters," has passed into history. A century hence, my 

 statement of having seen a 20-pouud lobster may be received in the same way, and 

 some judge, yet unborn, may paraphrase the above decision, and solemnly declare 

 that "statements are not lobsters." 



A curious thing about a lobster is the difference in its claws. One is thick and 

 blunt and the other is long and slender. One seems to be for crushing hard objects 

 and its mate seems formed to hold them. This is the case with every individual, but 

 there are right-handed and left-handed lobsters. Some years ago Mrs. Mather painted 

 lobsters surrounded by celery, oil, vinegar, and all the necessaries for a mayonaise, but 

 one of the lobsters had the big claw on its left. When allowed to see it, I remarked that 

 there was either a mistake or her specimen was abnormal. She insisted that the 

 original must have been so, and on my next visit to Fulton Market, where over 100 

 lobsters were handled for ray edification, I found that a lobster might be either right 

 or left handed without violating any rule, and then made my apologies to the artist. 



The color of lobsters sometimes varies from the ordinary olive-green, with reddish 

 tints on the claws, to red all over, and a mottled coat is quite often seen. Bed ones 

 are quite rare, and the few of this color I have seen have been lighter than the boiled 

 lobster, sometimes with a yellowish cast. The cause of the variations is not known. 



The lobster feeds upon animal food exclusively, for its digestive system could not 

 assimilate vegetation. Its stomach is a sac, just behind the mouth, and has no other 

 opening, save the small pores through which the digested portion of chyme or chyle 

 is filtered into the thorax, there being a space of some inches between the stomach 

 and the only intestine, or drain tube, which begins at the first segment of the abdo- 

 men and runs without convolution to the cloaca. The stomach is fitted with rough, 

 bony plates to masticate the food, and when opened shows a fanciful figure called "the 

 lady in the chair." All bones and undigested portions are ejected through the mouth. 

 In dressing a lobster for the table, the so-called "poisonous parts" are rejected. 

 They are the stomach, which could not be eaten, and the vein-like intestine spoken of. 

 To remove the latter it is only necessary to split the abdomen, or so-called tail, length- 

 wise, when it will be seen as a greenish thread. All other parts are eatable, and the 

 tender green " fat " in the thorax, and the delicate, white " fat" lining its shell, should 

 never be lost, as they contribute both flavor and digestibility to the harder portions. 



The lobster does not range far south on our Atlantic coast, because it is sandy 

 south of New Jersey, and does not afford protection for them when in the soft state, 

 even if other conditions were favorable. Large individuals are sometimes taken on 

 the coasts of Delaware and Maryland, and they range as far north as Labrador, the 

 best lobster grounds of the Atlantic being Nova Scotia and Maine. They were formerly 

 abundant in Long Island Sound and about New York harbor, but the pollution of the 

 waters, especially with "sludgeacid" from the petroleum works, has driven them away. 

 This abominable stuff does not drift far, but settles on the bottom, and, while it may 

 not disturb the shad and salmon, which are migratory, it kills out the oysters, clams, 

 mussels, snails, and all those forms that live on the bottom, including the lobster, and 

 compels the fishes which seek food in those waters to go elsewhere. The canning of 

 small lobsters in Maine may affect the product there, but the worst of all enemies is 

 man. Of all the destructive agents to animal life of most kinds, man stands at the 



