REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 15 



body of the female, goes on under all circumstances without the help 

 of man, and moreover during the first months of embryonic develop- 

 ment there is no avail in any artificial interference for the purpose of 

 hastening or even of merely continuing the development. The em- 

 bryonic development of the lobster has the enormously long duration 

 of 11 to 12 months, and no hatchery is able to work with such pre- 

 cision that the eggs entrusted to it shall remain normal for almost a 

 year. Also, an artificial hatching lasting so long would occasion such 

 heavy expenses that they would stand out of proportion to the at- 

 tainable result. Therefore it is out of the question that the fertilized 

 lobster eggs should go through their entire development under ar- 

 tificial conditions. Again, for such a long time artificial means would 

 hardly be able to reproduce the favorable conditions under which the 

 eggs normally develop on the swimming appendages on the under 

 side of the female lobster. 



But when in spring, after the long pause of winter, lobster catching 

 begins, and by and by pregnant females are taken in the traps — at 

 the beginning of the fishing season this happens not at all, or very 

 rarely — the embryos which these females cany on their bodies are 

 then already three-fourths of a year old and more, and stand at a 

 longer or shorter interval before hatching out. Now, in order not to 

 lose these pregnant females in commerce and consumption, and, on 

 the other hand, not to destroy a numerous and already well-developed 

 progeny, devices have been tried for stripping off the mature eggs 

 carefully from the mother and for bringing them to complete ma- 

 turity and hatching them in specially constructed apparatus, while 

 the mothers themselves are delivered over to consumption. 



This device readily showed itself completely practical to this ex- 

 tent, that, when properly placed in hatching apparatus or floating 

 boxes, the eggs developed very well and with relatively little loss up 

 to hatching out, so that we were in a i^osition to give back to the sea, 

 in the shape of young lobsters, what we had robbed it of in the shape 

 of maturing embryos together with their mothers. 



The commission of inspection for the Newfoundland lobster 



