CHANGES IN FOEM AND COLOR IN SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF 

 THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 



(Homarus Americanus.) 



WITH DRAWINGS FROM LIFE. 



PRELIMINARY REPORT. 



PHIL. B. HADLEY, 



BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 



The present paper is presented with a triple purpose in view: 

 first, to give a brief review of some of the more common facts which 

 have been discovered in regards to the nature and physiology of 

 the pigments of the American lobster and related forms; second, 

 to present the result of a rather brief experimentation upon this 

 subject, carried on at Wickford, R. I.; and third, to record a series 

 of observations upon the form and color changes which take place in 

 the successive stages of Homarus — a series of observations extending 

 over eleven stages of the lobster's existence, and culminating at the 

 time when he has come into his heritage of the adult color, and 

 probably of the adult structural type. 



The observations recorded in the following report were carried on 

 during the past year, 1904, at the experiment station of the Rhode 

 Island Commission of Inland Fisheries, at Wickford, R. I., and also 

 in part at the biological laboratory of Brown University. The 

 work at the experiment station was rendered especially favorable 

 and advantageous by the unlimited and unsurpassed opportunities 

 for carrying on observations upon large numbers of young lobsters 



