6 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



repeatedly by the fisheries boards of the United States, Canada, 

 Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Denmark for the purpose 

 of discovering a method of protecting the young lobsters through 

 this period. The follomng extract from an article on the lobster by 

 Dr. Ehrenbaum, of the German Fisheries Station at Helgoland, 

 published in the Fischer ei Zeitung, July, 1903, strongly emphasizes 

 both the importance and the difficulty of this stage in lobster culture. 

 Having spoken of the egg laying habits and the experiments in 

 hatching, he continues: 



"The especially critical period for the later growth of the lobster 

 begins, therefore, as we have seen, with the hatching of the larvae, 

 and artificial protection must commence here in order to bring the 

 young animals through the most dangerous time of their lives. Un- 

 fortunately the efforts hitherto made have met with little success. 

 One can, of course, easily keep away the enemies which feed upon 

 them, but the young animals kept in confinement being necessarily 

 very much crowded, develop such disastrous cannibalism — they 

 eat one another up, even when they are so richly supplied wdth ap- 

 propriate food — that hitherto all experiments in rearing them have 

 been wrecked. Those which do not fall victims to this cannibalism 

 enter for the most part the quickly following, but often not smoothly 

 running, moulting process. The Norwegian Appell5f, who has re- 

 cently conducted especially painstaking researches respecting this 

 point, reports that the first two moults run along smoothly, while 

 enormously great sacrifices attend the two follomng ones. By the 

 use of the greatest precautions he succeeded in carrying over out of 

 1,500 larvae of the second stage, 400 into the third, and 100 individ- 

 uals into the fourth stage, with which last the life at the bottom 

 begins." 



Ehrenbaum continues to the effect that inasmuch as no success- 

 ful method has yet been devised for overcoming these difficulties in 

 a practicable way, the only thing left to do is to turn overboard the 

 lobsters as soon as they are hatched, as has been done in times past. 

 Your commission has dealt particularly with this problem for several 



