222 . BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
To one confronting the problem of lobster culture these cardinal facts in 
the natural history of the lobster point out clearly and exactly the line of attack. 
We can hardly expect to increase the number of eggs per lobster (and fortu- 
nately the number is at any rate very large) or to improve on the natural 
method of protecting and hatching the eggs, for up to the time when the eggs 
are actually hatched there seems to be little loss in nature. It is during that 
period directly after hatching, when in nature the larve are neither protected 
from without nor equipped for self-protection, that the great opportunity offers 
to ‘‘surpass the achievements of nature” by protecting these individuals. Not 
only is this period the weak spot which artificial culture may be expected to 
strengthen, but the superabundance of larve normally produced for sacrifice is 
advantageous because it furnishes readily the material for cultivation. Still 
another condition particularly favors the cultivation of lobsters: It is that the 
critical period between the perfectly protected eggs and the well-equipped 
bottom-living lobsterlings is so short (only two or three weeks). Altogether, 
then, there would seem to be no doubt that the greatest practical results of 
lobster culture can be obtained by concentrating efforts upon protecting the 
fry through the critical larval period. This has been quite generally and inde- 
pendently recognized as a fact by those who have studied the lobster problem, 
and it has been an incentive to the many attempts made by experimenters on 
both sides of the Atlantic to rear lobsters through the larval stages. It has 
been, likewise, the incentive to a continuous series of experiments and operations 
extending over exactly ten years, which have resulted in the method of lobster 
culture presented in this paper. 
CHARACTERS AND HABITS OF LARVAL LOBSTERS. 
It is a necessary preliminary to. an intelligible account of the method itself 
to sketch briefly the habits of larval lobsters and to indicate some of the peculiar 
difficulties which the method has to overcome. 
Hatching.—The hatching of the ripe eggs of an individual female lobster is 
a gradual process requiring at least several days and varying with the tempera- 
ture of the water and perhaps with the lateness of the season. In the latter 
‘part of June, when nearly ripe lobsters are brought into the warm water of a 
shallow estuary, the hatching is accelerated. The fact of the gradual breaking 
loose of the eggs is undoubtedly of importance in the economy of the lobster 
under natural conditions, for it prevents the possibility of the swarming of the 
young fry and the attendant dangers of speedy recognition and capture. 
When the larval lobsters first break out of the egg membrane they are 
closely coiled in the form of an oval spheroid with the terminal segments of the 
abdomen bent over the rostrum. In a few moments they straighten out and 
expand and then immediately take up the pelagic life and instincts which they 
retain until they reach the so-called “fourth stage,” after shedding their skins 
three times. 
