318 American Fisheries Society 



ward during the night and on stormy days when the inshore 

 water is cool for the purpose of feeding. No females with 

 well-developed eggs were ever taken at the station in traps 

 set in shallow water, and among many hundreds brought into 

 the market at Key West none was observed with brown or 

 light gray eggs unless the fisherman had set his traps in deeper 

 water than usual. That the eggs hatch normally while the 

 female is in deep water seems all the more likely since Waldo 

 L. Schmitt, of the United States National Museum, states that 

 he found the phyllosomes of the closely related species of 

 California, Panulirus interrupHis, far off shore in 75 fathoms 

 of water.* 



Any further experiments, therefore, must take into ac- 

 count the fluctuations in the temperature of the water. If this 

 factor can be controlled, one very difficult obstacle will have 

 been removed. It was found necessary to shade the trough in 

 which the larvse were kept, since they are heliotropic and tend 

 to crowd together with the result that they become tangled 

 inextricably and die. Water which is heavily laden with sedi- 

 ment is detrimental to the welfare of the larvse, since the silt 

 settles on them and weighs them down, causing death. 



The problem of feeding the larvse is difficult because of 

 their small size, although their mouth parts are well developed, 

 even in the first stage, and the mandibles are fully capable of 

 masticating small copepod larvse. Any artificial food must be 

 very finely divided, such as the particles of beef liver that could 

 be squeezed through fine bolting cloth. 



As far as the writer is aware, none of the many experi- 

 ments in rearing the larvse under artificial conditions has re- 

 sulted in success. The reasons advanced for these failures are 

 numerous and varied, but they may all be summed up in the 

 statement that the natural conditions for larval existence and 



* Waldo L. Schmitt. Early stages of the spiny lobster taken by the boat 

 "Albacore." California Fish and Game, vol. 5, number 1, p. 24-25. Sacramento, 

 Jan., 1919. 



