84 SEA-SHORE LIFE 
but blue, red or cream-colored lobsters are sometimes seen. It isa 
great burrower, digging holes with its claws fully two feet deep, 
and then entering the burrow tail first. It feeds upon almost any 
dead animal it may find and will readily capture living fishes, or 
other marine animals, including young lobsters. These are torn to 
pieces in its large claws, and then still further ground up in the 
“gastric mill” or gizzard-like teeth of the stomach. Cod and other 
fishes destroy countless numbers of lobsters. 
The eggs are usually laid in July or August, and adhere to the 
abdominal appendages of the female, while the great tail “fin,” or 
telson, is folded forward soas to cover them. In this condition they 
are carried for about eleven months, so that they usually hatch 
between May 15th and July 15th. A female eight inches long will 
lay about 5,000 eggs, while one seventeen inches in length will pro- 
duce fully 63,000. Individual lobsters do not spawn oftener than 
once every two years. 
The little lobsters are about one-third of an inch long, and as 
transparent as glass, so that one may see their internal organs 
clearly. They immediately rise to the surface, and their feathered 
feet enable them to swim actively about. The claws are now very 
small, and the whole creature is shrimp-like in appearance. The 
little creatures swim at the surface for five or six weeks, devouring 
a great variety of minute animals, and not hesitating to bite off the 
legs of other young lobsters whom they may chance to meet. They 
moult six times and then sink to the bottom, and crawl into shallow 
water, where they remain hidden away under stones until autumn. 
On the approach of cold weather all of the lobsters crawl out into 
deep water, never going, however, to a depth much greater than 600 
feet. They seem to prefer waters of a temperature of about 55° F. 
Professor Bumpus has shown that lobsters wander over the bottom 
to a considerable extent; one individual went twelve miles in 
three days. 
Our lobster fisheries are worth at least $1,500,000 annually, 
but unless wise laws are soon enforced for their protection the ruth- 
less persecution to which the lobsters have been subjected will prac- 
tically exterminate them, in so far as commerce is concerned. No 
lobster under 103 inches in length should be sold, and no female 
carrying eggs should be killed. An excellent description of the 
