(595.38 38 



i 591.1 



(591.63 



III. 



The Lobster in Commerce and Science: its 

 Name and Nature.' 



LOBSTERS also are cannibals. Especially are the larval forms 

 weak in moral sense. They prefer to feed on one another, it is 

 said, even when suitable food of a different kind is offered them. The 

 adults think nothing of chopping asunder a defenceless brother, 

 neither have they any objection to filling their stomachs with lobster 

 eggs. All this is not for want of outside enemies. As Dr. Herrick 

 puts it, " Every predaceous fish which feeds upon the bottom may be 

 an enemy of the lobster. The cod is one of the most destructive to 

 small lobsters, after the larval stages are past." But, in truth, the 

 origin of Dr. Herrick's interesting and finely illustrated volume is due 

 to the fact that the lobster has another and more dangerous enemy 

 than any fish, however predaceous. Its chief peril lies in that com- 

 bination of cleverness and stupidity which man so often exhibits in 

 meddling with other races. He is always clever enough to conquer, 

 not always skilful enough to preserve. A fisherman was asked to 

 explain where the marriageable maidens would be found if all the 

 young girls in the world were perpetually destroyed. He thought the 

 question not to the purpose, because a human mother does not bring 

 forth on an average eleven children, whereas the lobster mother on an 

 average bears eleven thousand. Some crustaceans produce eleven 

 hundred thousand eggs, or many more. Whatever the number 

 produced, an average of two or three of the offspring surviving to 

 maturity suffices to maintain the numbers of any given species. It 

 might seem almost needless to take precautions for saving so small a 

 proportion of the whole yield of lobster spawn. Dr. Herrick and 

 others who have studied the subject most closely are far from thinking 

 so. Though there may be little reason to fear the extermination of a 

 creature so prolific, it may be very easy to worry or scare it away 

 from those regions where its presence is most desirable, and by sheer 

 carelessness and want of thrift to destroy a valuable source of food- 



i"The American Lobster: a Study of its Habits and Development." By 

 Francis Hobart Herrick, Professor of Zoology in Adelbert College of Western 

 Reserve University. Being Article I., extracted from Bull. U.S. Fish Comm. for 

 1895. Pp. 1-282, plates A.-J., and 1-54. Washington : Government Printing 

 Ofl&ce, 1895. 



