62 



DEPARTMENT OF TEE NAVAL SERVICE 



8 GEORGE V, A. 1918 



occasion a female, which was known to carry a few eggs, was later found to be without 

 any. In a third instance two females, both with eggs, were placed in a crate and a 

 few days afterwards one of them was found to have lost her eggs. 



Here, then, we have records of three different occasions on which lobsters lost 

 their eggs a short time after extruding them. If unfertilized eggs " go bad " and 

 drop oS within a few weeks or even months after extrusion, it is easy to understand 

 how our fishermen find not more than an average of 20 per cent (according' to one 

 member of the Shell Fish Commission of 1912-13) of the females carrying eggs. It 

 may be, too, that mothers, when pressed by hunger, eat their eggs, whether fertilized 

 or not fertilized. I have myself watched a female tearing off unfertilized eggs from 

 her swimmerets, passing them forward and transferring them to her mouth with her 

 maxillipedes. On examining her abdomen, the egg clusters could be seen ragged and 

 torn on each side and partly removed. It could not be said in this instance that the 

 eating of her eggs was the result of hunger, because all the lobsters in the pound this 

 summer were well cared for and regularly fed. 



The fourth instance of the loss of eggs was the most remarkable of all. In this 

 case none of the eggs adhered to the abdomen. The first intimation we had that eggs 

 were being laid was seeing them floating around in the current on the floor of one of 

 our rearing boxes. These were all soft and jelly-like, and undoubtedly, diseased and 

 unfertilized. 



Fig. 4,— Mother lobsters canying newly extruded eggs. These are 

 attached to the paired swimming feet on the imder surface of the abdomen. 

 When carrying eggs, the mothers always bend the latter part of the abdomen 

 and tail under the body so that the eggs are as well protected as if carried 

 in a covered cup. In the illustration the abdomen is extended so as to expose 

 the eggs to view. 



