through openings in front of Vvhich rauze of sil?c v;it}i c. 3/4 inra. 

 nosh prevented dirt nnd undesirable ajiininl life froia entering. 



The yirr.ter thus flor/ing into the tank nt the ends vj-ould 

 course past the nother lobsters, take up the nev;]y born larvr.e 

 and continue-: through three v;ide rubber tubes locr.ted near the 

 middle nnd designed to overflov; into an adjacent tnnlco Out of 

 this tank the lai*vae could then be fished with a net and coixnted 

 out into the propagating tanksp Aside from that the installation 

 vj-^uld run itselfo ■. 



I vrent out from the supposition that five ripe seed lobsters 

 rrotild be able vdthin a short time to produce enough larvae to stock 

 a tanlc but this expectation vms not fulfilled* In the first place, 

 it is impossible to tell V/liether the eg^s are entirely ripe and 

 ready to start hatchir-' and furthermore five lobsters cannot 

 produce from 10 to 20 thousand eggg in one or two dayso Yes,, even 

 when two lobsters vrere --laced in each section the daily hatch 

 amounted to only a fovY hundred© Although aside fron that the 

 system operated vj-ith conplote satisfaction I had to abandon it 

 because the capacity was too snail© To increase this capacity 

 by adding another tanl-: of mother lolisters iTould have overtaxed 

 the buoyancy of the rafto 



I then returned to the previous American method, placed the 

 available mother lol'sters in one or two ordinary lobster pots and 

 floated these in the corrers of the propagating tanlcs. Also in the 

 season of 1920 the ripe seed lo'Msters were usually placed in one 

 of the large propr gating t^nks and the larvae fished out and 

 planted in the smaller onese 



VJhen in 1919 I had the disposal of only two tanlcs it was a 

 long time before these v/cre, st'^cked vfith larvae. The slow hatch- 

 ing of eggs v/as' also contri'':-uted to Ly the very low tej.i]->erature 

 of the water, during the most ii-i^Jortant part of the season. The 

 reason that the number of larvae coming from one seed lobster is 

 often small is probably duo tj the circwustance that in caring fcr 

 these potential mothers S'^ many eggs^, just the ripest, Y;hich are 

 easiest to dislodge^, are lost. The seed lolsters are mostly 

 kept in captivity frcjx the end of May and i.iust bo handled daily 

 to check on the bands around the clav;s and to inspect the process 

 of ripening of - the eggso During these ins-pecti^ns and before one 

 has a good lipoid qn themes the lobsters are a-pt to violently thrash 

 their tails about causing the dislodgeuent of a nu.T.ii)er of eggse 



All this could be r.voided to a great extent by procuring from 

 the fishermen the ripe seed-lobsters whenever me were momentarily 

 in need of them. By allowing tho larvae to hatch in the propagat- 

 ing tanks themselves it is of course not possible to make certain 

 of the n'umi'oer of larvae present o This hrs to be estimated and for 

 this purpose I constructed a small, circular wire frame of a 



133 



