40 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES, 



off in this manner. In a few instances, through a curious deformity 

 of the walking legs, lobsters have tried in vain for days to free them- 

 selves from their cast shell. 



Color. — Toward the end of the fourth stage light colored spots 

 appear on the lobster, especially on the tips of the claws, back, and 

 end of tail. These never show in the cast shell, but the lobster just 

 emerged into the fifth stage is very brightly marked. The coloration 

 varies in individual lobsters and persists through several stages, but 

 never appears in the casts. The latter are nearly colorless, at least 

 up to the ninth stage, and have usually an even light bluish or purple 

 tint. Mr. Hadley, in a special paper, has dealt with the color changes 

 of the young lobsters more in detail. 



Duration of the Interval Between Successive Moults. — One of the 

 prime objects of the experiments in rearing individual lobsters sepa- 

 rately was to ascertain the interval between successive moults after 

 the fourth stage. The intervals gradually increase in length up to 

 the fifth stage and that from the fifth to the sixth stage was natu- 

 rally expected to be still greater. But in our experiments it often 

 was not more than half as long. 



The table given below shows a number of cases in which the moult- 

 ing time was known with accuracy often to the hour of moulting : 



