A METHOD OF LOBSTER CULTURE. 235 
successful, though the number of fry reared was small. The total output is sum- 
marized in the report of the work in these words: 
Several lobsters were actually raised to the stage when the characters of the adult 
are assumed—the fourth moult. 
The next year, 1899, the results were better because of the use of ‘“‘a large 
bag of scrim made after the fashion of a fish pocket and hanging down into the 
water from a square floating frame.’’ The output is given in the following 
words: 
By the methods above described, and after many failures, accidents, and reverses, 
we succeeded in raising several hundred lobsters to the fourth stage. 
During the following season, 1900, several lots of newly hatched fry were 
transported from the United States Fish Commission station at Woods Hole to the 
new floating laboratory of the Rhode Island Commission of Inland Fisheries at 
Wickford, R. I. (the two commissions working in cooperation), where further 
experiments with scrim bags were started parallel to those still being conducted at 
Woods Hole. At the floating laboratory at Wickford the trials and reverses -of 
the previous year at Woods Hole were again experienced, but the experiments 
were under the eye of the person in charge, by night as well as by day, because 
the small houseboat functioned as a residence. ~The greatest virtue of the 
loosely hung scrim bags consisted in the undulatory ‘peristaltic’? movements, 
due to wind and tide, which tended to keep the lobsters off the bottom, but it 
was observed that during the nights there were periods of dead calm and of 
slack tide, when the fry sank to the bottom and died. This led to the simple 
conclusion that if the fry, left to themselves, persisted in sinking to the bottom 
to die they must be stirred up and prevented from sinking; so after this they 
were stirred with an oar continually night and day. The total reared to the 
fourth stage was 3,425. The results showed unequivocally that the proper 
principle had been discovered, and immediately plans were laid to substitute a 
mechanical apparatus by which this method could be less laboriously carried 
into effect. Curiously enough, some large two-bladed fans revolving over a 
restaurant table for the purpose of driving away flies suggested the type of appa- 
ratus suited to the purpose, and this type has been in use ever since. 
The next year, 1901, the United States Bureau of Fisheries again cooperated 
with the Rhode Island commission. Some of the fry were imported from Woods 
Hole and some were hatched at Wickford. An apparatus for using the two- 
bladed propeller was designed and installed by Mr. G. H. Sherwood. The 
results confirmed the correctness of the principle, and the output for the year 
was 8,974. 
During the subsequent years the method has been developed and the appa- 
ratus again and again remodeled to incorporate the results of our failures and 
aBumpus, Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Rhode Island Commissioners of Inland Fisheries, 
1898, p. 98. 
