402 OUR FISHES AND THEIR ENEMIES—AMBROSE. 
if imitated elsewhere, would in a very few years destroy the 
supply. The Sambro factory at first attempted boating lobsters 
from the neighboring harbours, which were so soon depleted as 
to compel the owner to remove it to Peggy’s Cove at the mouth 
of St. Margaret’s Bay, and shortly afterwards to collect from 
places still more distant from his factory. 
Since my removal to Digby in 1870, where lobster canning did 
not commence until some years afterwards, I have noticed the 
same exterminating process in operation. Lobsters, until the 
canning began. could be captured by hand occasionally, crawling 
amongst the sea-weed on the flats at low tide, at Smith’s Cove 
and the mouth of the Joggin, near this town. After the Digby 
factory began its operations, depletion soon became manifest. 
Lobsters are now brought to this factcry, in the open season, 
from places as distant as Gulliver's Cove, some eight miles from 
this town. When the traps are brought ashore, too often con- 
taining small lobsters, these—instead of being returned to the 
water—are, in some cases, carried ashore for family consumption, 
or boiled for the pigs. Considering that it requires three years 
from the ova before the lobster is capable of reproduction, and 
that the average life of the creature is but about nine years, the 
evils of over-fishing and the destruction of the immature can 
scarcely be over-estimated. And yet, like some saw-mill propri- 
etors, some lobster-catchers can be found in this selfish world 
clamouring in political newspapers and otherwise for larger 
extension instead of reasonable restriction of their destructive 
methods. 
In the first case, the improved fish-way over mill-dams, with 
its lower end always in deep water, should be insisted upon in 
every instance, as also the utter prohibition of saw-dust and all 
other mill-refuse from our streams. In the other, lobster-traps 
should never be permitted near shore in shoal water, but at a 
reasonable distance outside, in not less than a depth of four 
fathoms. This, with an annual close season, certainly not shorter 
than the present length, would go a long way towards preventing 
the destruction of lobster-fishing, which at present seems inevit- 
able, and in the near future. But restrictions such as these will 
\ 
