J 



relr.tl'^nsbip between nge end size hr—e been reached by cclculL'.tions 

 T-hich rrej, hcwever, to be regarded li]:owise .ns little relir.ble as 

 those rncde by Eli.renba\im» 



Exc.mnntions also made by Jlend r.nd Vfilliaris (3) on the /inerican 

 species include a large number of individuals rroii three months to 

 about 2g- years '^Id have no special interest for judging the ^rOTrth 

 of our species except that they also shovj- excopti'jnr.lly big 

 individual variations in the former. On account of the erctrenely 

 differert physical conditions of the sea ivater near Rhode Island 

 and on our coasts, an earlier s]:ai72iini^ tine in the former place 

 and therefore a lon(^er grovjth period^ the relationship betvreen age 

 and size of the i-merican species is entirely different thaii for ours. 



We will mention briefly a few conditions that are reloted to 

 the growth and moultin;" of the lobster. It has ooen and v/ill 

 continue to be a general belief that shedding is the direct cause 

 of grovdsh because the shell is supposed to burst becaxise of thato 

 Counter to this belief however is the circuinstance that exception- 

 ally a moulting is passed through by Gone individuals v/ithout a 

 grca'jth in length being observed afterwards. This was the case 

 with two individuals at Kvittings/ tht^t moulted in 1907^ according 

 to v:hat customs officer T3vertsen coiTTaur.icates-> One of these vra.s 

 33, another 28 cmso lonr; and one could identify no grovrbh af^er 

 noulti:ig. Williamson has also found (p. 92) that certain individ- 

 uals do not increase in lon;^-th a.t a sheddirg* Tne big variations 

 which oven the -sane individual may show in its various noultinga 

 speak against the surmise 'that grov,-bh is supposed to be the direct 

 and only basis for mo\ilting. This sane individual can indeed have 

 a larger grov/th in a younger stage than in a later one and one was 

 still supposed to believe that the larger the shell becoiies the 

 more room there would be inside before the shell is burst and all 

 the more indeed vras the individi;al-»in any case whilerit'is 

 engaged in groviring—supposed to increase in length at each moulting* 



This all seems to prove to me that the moulting is caused by 

 entirely different physiological processes than by the grovfth even 

 if in most cases it goes hand in hand with an increase in size. It 

 is, hov/ever, outside the sphere of this paper to go in for a closer 

 examination of these conditions which will likely become the subject 

 ^f a special study. 



As vxell knovm the lobster has, as other higher Crustacea, the 

 ability to be able to free itself of certain body parts and the 

 first set of feete In most cases it frees itself of the pincers 

 or first pair of feet vdaichcre the most exposed. In order to find 

 out how the grc/fth of these body parts ta]-;es place I kept in a 

 floating box one lobster v/hose pincer was thrown off but for v/liich 

 a nev; claw formation had begun. At the end of approximr.tely 10 

 months, the pincer Yia'l reached approximately a length of five cms.; 

 it Yms, hoY/ever, as is alrrays the cose^ quite soft and incompletely 



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