LOBSTER INVESTIGATIONS 



63 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 38a 



MOULTING. 



We had opportunities of witnessing several successful moults and also several 

 failures to moult, followed by death. The act is too well known to require description. 

 In healthful surroundings and under the stimulus of adequate food, the act cannot 

 be a critical one for a vigorous animal, but, if conditions are not favourable, as in the 

 pound, then the act may well be fraught with danger. There can be but little food in 

 winter, especially, within the limited area of the compartments, and considering the 

 leakage, the supply of fresh sea-water at low tide must also have been scanty. The 

 slimy mud that covered their gills was an ever-present menace, so that the animals 

 were weakened by their long confinement, and some of them, therefore, unfit to store 

 materials in the body for the manufacture of the new shell or the excretion of waste 

 material from the body. What more likely thing could happen than that some of 

 them would succeed in moulting, while others would fail and die? 



BLIND LOBSTERS. 



On noticing the blind lobsters, the first question that occurred to me was to ask 

 whether the sight would be restored after moulting. The question was generally 

 answered in the affirmative, but not always. In the case of a female which had spent 

 a year at least, and possibly more, in the pond, it was found that she was still blind. 

 The algal growths had penetrated too deeply into the substance of the eye and had 

 destroyed the underlying tissue. In one other case, the sight was impaired, but not 

 lost; but, generally speaking, the process of moulting restored the sight. 



NUMBERS OF EGG-BEARING FEMALES. 



It is greatly to be regretted that statistics in regard to the relative numbers of 

 egg-bearing lobsters are not available. The following table from Herrick's book is 

 valuable so far as it goes. Facts of a like kind are given by Vinal Edwards for No 

 Man's Land. Similar facts do not appear to be available in Canada, so far as the 

 writer knows. 



Record of the Total Catch of Lobsters at Woodshole, Mass., from December 1, 1893, 

 to June 30, 1&94, showing the number and size of egg-bearing females. 



Percentage of females which carry eggs, 12. 



Percentage of females with eggs at No Man's Land, 63 7, but that was over twenty years ago, when 

 lobsters were moie .abundant than now. 



