A METHOD OF LOBSTER CULTURE. 



BY A. D. MEAD, PH. D. 



RHODE ISLAND COMMISSION OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



THE PROBLEM. 



Artificial breeding ought not to be content to do as its best only what 

 nature does unaided. It obtains its real justification only when it is 

 in a position to surpass nature in her achievements. Onty thus can 

 it accomplish the task set it — to fill up the gaps caused by years of ex- 

 cessive fishing. (Professor Ehrenbaum, in Mitteilungen des Deut- 

 schen Seefischereivereins, Bd. 23, Juni 1907. — Translated.) 



In the case of the lobster, nature has made adequate provision for 

 the protection of the eggs up to the very time they are hatched. As is 

 well known, the eggs laid in July or later in the summer or in the 

 early fall are carried attached to the swimmerets under the abdomen, 

 of the female lobster, and there are protected until the following June 

 or July, when they hatch out (fig. 9) . The young lobsters, also, when 

 they have successfully passed through three moults and have at- 

 tained the so-called "bottom stages" are equipped with structures 

 and instincts which fit them exceedingly well for holding their own 

 in the struggle for existence; but there intervenes between the hatching 

 and the attainment of the first bottom stage a brief period of two or 

 three weeks in which the young lobsters, having lost utterly the pro- 

 tection of the mother animals, and not yet having acquired either 

 the structure or the instinct which would give them a reasonable 

 degree of individual security, are exposed and helpless to an extra- 

 ordinary degree. 



Those who have studied the question of lobster culture agree that 

 this short interval may properly be called the "critical period" in the 



