IS REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



If with this purpose one approaches the plan of an artificial lob- 

 ster culture, there can no longer be any doubt at what point the pro- 

 tective measures of the lobster cuJturist must be applied. 



The lobster during its embryonic development, although this 

 lasts very long, enjoys remarkable protection on the part of the 

 mother animal, and also later, if the young lobster once gets devel- 

 oped so far that it can live on the bottom— which happens usually 

 in the third week of its life— it is able in a remarkable manner to 

 protect itself from all kinds of enemies, so that its life is threatened 

 in a relatively small degree. 



But in the first two to three weeks of its life, \vhen the lobster moves 

 about in the upper layers of the water, more tumbling about than 

 swimming, and leads a plankton life, the number of the dangers that 

 threaten its life are so much the greater. Its slow movements, its 

 unusually vivid coloring, and its size work together to the result that 

 despite the greatest care it falls a victim to numerous robbers, es- 

 pecially among the fishes, so that this short section in the life of the 

 lobster may rightfully be called its critical period. 



From this state of things, it is very clear that here must lie the 

 point of attack for artificial breeding; it must try to bring the young 

 lobster over the short period of its plankton life and keep it under 

 protective care until it, as a normal dweller on the bottom, shall 

 find the necessary protection in natural conditions. 



Since there is here only the question of the brief period of two to 

 three weeks, one can hardly imagine a more ideal subject for arti- 

 ficial breeding than the lobster, for it looks as if, with comparatively 

 small means and in a short time, a grand triumph could be wrested 

 from nature through artificial interference. 

 So it looks! 



But as a matter of fact there are very great difficulties to overcome. 



The first attempts to raise new-born lobsters in captivity, to bring 



them past the first moultings and to lead them over into the fourth 



life-stage, in which life on the bottom can be taken up, ended in a 



complete fiasco. A fatal inclination of the larva> toward cannibal- 



