256 



to occur as far to the southward as the coast of New Jersey, and to the 

 northward as far as Henley Harbour, Chateau Bay, Labrador, where it was 

 observed by Packard in 1864. At Grand Manan, Stimpson notes that 

 lobsters are " said by the inhabitants to occur in great numbers in May, at 

 Grand Harbour, in holes in the sand just below low water mark. They are 

 easily taken with boat hooks." In Passamaquoddy Bay, Ganong says that 

 lobsters are "quite abundant in the pools near low-water mark, hiding in 

 cavities under ledges." Off Pictou Island and at several localities in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, the writer has frequently taken very young living 

 specimens, less than an inch in length, in a towing net, among masses of 

 Fucus and other coarse sea weeds drifted from near the shore. The early 

 stages of the American lobster have been described in detail by Professor 

 S. I. Smith, in the American Journal of Science and Arts for June, 187i^, 

 the paper being descriptive of specimens from Vineyard Sound and the 

 adjacent waters. 



In Mr. F. H. Herrick's memoir on "The American Lobster : A Study of 

 its Habits and Development," published in 1895, in the Bulletin of the U. 

 S. Fish Commission, vol. xv., and on p. 117, the following passage occurs, in 

 reference to the size that this species sometimes attains to. 



" These notes furnish evidence, if any were needed, that very large lobsters, 

 weighing twenty pounds or more, are even now occasionally taken, but I 

 have never obtained any reliable evidence that lobsters weighing over 

 twenty five pounds have ever been caught. When lobsters are said to have 

 attained a greater weight, measurements of the parts of the skeleton which 

 have been preserved invariably prove that the figures have been exaggerated. 

 I do not maintain that the American lobster does not reach a greater weight 

 than twenty-five pounds, but that I have been unable, up to the present 

 time, to discover any well authenticated evidence that this is the case." 



" Many points on the coast of Maine and the Maritime Provinces still 

 furnish large lobsters, weighing ten pounds or more, but not in any conside- 

 rable number, and lobsters of five pounds weight are fi-equently common ; 

 yet it is at the same time true that the size of the lobster has been declining 

 for many years, until the average weight has, in most places, fallen below 

 two pounds."* 



In the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. xii., 

 published in 1900, Professor R. P. Whitfield says that two lobsters, one 

 weighing about thirty-four pounds, and the other about thirty-one, were 

 taken off Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, in the spring of 1897. And, in 

 the Montreal Daily Witness for June 8, 1901, it is stated that a lobster 

 that " measures four feet from the tip of the claws to the tip of the tail," 

 and " weighs twenty-three pounds, was caught in a trap a few miles off the 

 shore of Grand Manan," in June, 1901. 



* For this reference the wrker is indebted to Mr. J. Crawford Simpson. 



