216 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
alty—a fine of $1—for each lobster found in any man’s possession, whether he caught it 
or whether he bought it, under approximately 101% inches in length. 
That has been thesystem fora numberof years. Two yearsago, when I tookchargeof 
this department, I was very familiar with the lobster men and their habits, having lived 
among them for a number of years; and I adopted a different method of enforcement. 
While I enforce the same penalties and in some cases have to use the same methods, I 
commenced, instead of using legal suasion on the fishermen, using moral suasion, and 
have at the present time educated in the neighborhood of 2,000 of them (there are only 
about 3,000 that fish for lobsters) up to the idea that it is to their disadvantage to sell a 
lobster before he is approximately 10% inches in length. So that at the present time 
there are nearly 2,000 lobster fishermen that are helping the wardens to enforce the law. 
Without moral suasion, as one of the wardens said to me, ‘‘It would take one warden to 
every fisherman, and then you could not enforce the law,” which is true. 
The lobsters of the state of Maine are unquestionably on the increase, and we are 
satisfied in the state that the method we have adopted there is the best method. The 
idea of selling the small lobster and preserving the big ones is thought the best way by 
some. As a fair illustration of that I would like to ask any of you gentlemen from the 
West, where you raise beef, what would you think of a man out there in the beef business 
who sold all of his veals? Where would he get any beef to sell later? Would not that 
be practically where we would be if we sold our small lobsters and did not save the big 
ones, the seed lobsters? What would result if we did not let the small ones grow? 
This method, I hope, will be the one that will be adopted by the other states. We were 
very sorry that Maine and Massachusetts could not agree upon a uniform law, because 
Massachusetts is our nearest neighbor and competitor, and we find it more or less diffi- 
cult to enforce the law with Boston a market for 9-inch lobsters. I hope the time will 
soon come when we can all have the same law, and I have not a doubt that, if we do, 
and give the proper protection to the lobster, there will be no question but we will have 
all the lobsters that this country wants at fair prices. This year Rhode Island has a 
larger catch than for a number of years; in fact, it has been a long time since Rhode 
Island produced many lobsters, and the way it looks now lobsters ought to be sold at 
lower prices. They have been too high, and it is no wonder that the public found 
fault with the price. But with the proper protection of the seed and by giving the 
little ones a chance to grow there is no question in my mind but what we will all have 
lobsters at fair prices. 
Mr. Fryer. There is one small point which has not been touched upon, and that is 
the question of what I may call the ‘‘average minimum size’’ at which lobsters are 
found to be egg bearing. The term ‘‘egg bearing’’ I assume is used in the sense of 
carrying the eggs externally. We have had in England precisely the same trouble 
that you have had here, accentuated by the fact that where we have tried a law pro- 
hibiting the landing of lobsters carrying berries we have found that the fishermen have 
evaded that law by brushing the eggs off, and in many cases, at certain stages of develop- 
ment, it is very difficult to prove that such a thing has been done and that the eggs 
have not been shed naturally. In the same direction we have adopted a method of 
Yegulation similar to that which you are adopting here, namely, regulation by size; 
but we are very much in doubt what is the proper size limit to fix. On some parts of 
our coast we are told that there is a diminutive race of lobsters, and that they never 
attain what is now the legal minimum size, namely, 8 inches; but within the last 
two years I have been having some rather extensive observations carried out with regard 
to the size of lobsters and their condition at the different sizes. One result of that has 
been certainly in the direction advocated by the last speaker, namely, that the minimum 
size at which lobsters may be taken needs increasing. We have found—I have not the 
exact figures in my mind, but I think Iam within the limit in saying it—that not oneina 
thousand female lobsters under 8 inches in length has been found to be carrying eggs 
externally, which goes to show that our law, fixing the minimum at 8 inches, is per- 
