LOBSTERS. 79 



Lobsters are not found outside the seas of the N. Atlantic 

 and Mediterranean, but the Americans have for some time 

 been making attempts to accommodate them on their Pacific 

 coasts hitherto, however, without success. Doubtless, there 

 are some of us who can, with pride, trace our ancestry back 

 to an ancient lineage, but we must all yield the palm to the 

 lobster family, for it is known that at least its prototype was 

 alive (and we have it still in fossil form) right away back in 

 the unwritten history of the period of the lower carboniferous 

 series in which it was first " captured " near Glasgow, and 

 given the unrecognisable name of " Anthrapalsemon Gros- 

 sartii." The " Century Dictionary " says the name " lobster " 

 is derived from the Latin word " locusta," which meant both 

 a lobster and a locust, and has come to be spelt as we use the 

 word and spell it, through the Saxons, who spelt it " loppes- 

 tre," " lopustre," and " lopystre ; " whilst our forefathers 

 in the middle-English days of spelling (beginning of the 12th 

 to beginning of 16th Centuries) spelt it " lopstere," " loppe- 

 ster," and " loppister." From thence until modern times 

 it was spelt " lobstar " and " lopster," until it ha^now pro- 

 bably reached its final form of " lobster." It is graphically 

 described as " A marine stalk-eyed crustacean of the sub -class 

 Podophthalma or Thoracostraca order, Decapoda (or ten-footed) ; 



" between the Orkneys and Hebrides there lived lobsters so huge they 

 could catch a strong swimmer and squeeze him to death in their 

 claws ! " 



(6) According to Buckland " the Skye and Orkney lobsters are 

 probably the largest in the British Islands," and the heaviest recorded 

 capture of a European lobster is 141b., but this is " undoubtedly very 

 rare." 



(c) It has been an accepted belief that the American lobster attains 

 a greater size than its European counterpart, but it seems to be a fact 

 that the maximum size of each species is nearly the same. The lobster 

 fishery is much older in Europe than in America, and the average size 

 there has been long reduced to a minimum by over-fishing. 



(d) The shortest length at which a lobster may be sold in U.S.A. is 

 lOMn., against Sin. allowed in England. 



