86 LOBSTERS. 



these figures and basing an estimate for the value of the 

 lobsters annually caught in Ireland upon the figures which 

 are at my command for England and Wales also Scotland, 

 plus 5% (which I feel sure, so far as England is concerned, 

 is too small an addition for the undervaluation that is given 

 the Government for the lobsters caught in our coastal 

 waters annually) we find the total value of all the lobster 

 captured per annum in the British Isles is, say, 85,000. In 

 the whole of the N. Atlantic (around the shores only) it equals 

 an average approximately of 1,400,000 or, assuming 

 the lobsters fetched on an average 9d. per Ib. and weighed 

 an average of lib. each, this would mean there are on an 

 average roundly 37,330,000 lobsters caught weighing approxi- 

 mately 16,700 tons ! Truly did the writer of the " Songs 

 of the Seaports " well say : 



" The husbandman has rent to pay ; blow winds blow. 

 And seed to purchase day by day ; row, boys, row ; 

 But he who farms the rolling deeps, 

 Tho' never sowing always reaps, 

 The ocean's fields are fair and free, 

 And there are no rent days on the sea." 



Lobsters are very voracious, active, and vigilant, but are 

 more alert in sufficiently warm water than in cold. They 

 ordinarily move by walking on their legs, and they can move 

 quite nimbly on them, but, when alarmed they strike the tail 

 smartly upon the chest and thus propel themselves backwards 

 as swift as an arrow, from 30 to 50 feet, so quickly that the 

 swiftest fish in the sea cannot overtake them ; and so dex- 

 terous are they, when pursued, that they can force themselves 

 through clefts and instertices which seem incapable of admit- 

 ting their bodies. They are stated to be of very sedentary 

 habits, but as an instance of what lobsters can do by way of 

 travelling, or perhaps, as an illustration of the sagacity of the 

 creature, I may say that on October 1st last year Captain 

 Masters (Chief Fishery Officer of the Southern Sea Fisheries 

 Committee) marked 11 undersized lobsters at Chapman's 



