142 GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



The commercial value of the lobster is very great. As an 

 article of human food it is fast becoming a luxury. Consid- 

 ering its original abundance at times when a fifteen-pound 

 lobster could be bought at the fisheries as cheaply as a two- 

 pound lobster, that is, for two cents, we may well ask whether 

 it is not time for the ratification of treaties between the United 

 States and Canada to govern more effectively the activities 

 of persons engaged in supplying the market. The researches 

 of Professor Bumpus, Professor Herrick, and others, have 

 made it clear that a female lobster seldom lays eggs before 

 she is at least eight or nine inches long. Although she car- 

 ries about five thousand eggs the first time, two years later 

 she would lay many thousand more than that number. Be- 

 cause of the numberless enemies the young encounter, few 

 live to adult life from these thousands of eggs. Legislation 

 which permits lobsters to be caught before they are eight 

 inches long may ultimately be responsible for the extermi- 

 nation of the species. Sensible laws and increased facilities 

 for hatching lobsters in captivity and releasing them after the 

 first critical stages, would do much toward replenishing the 

 lobster fisheries. 



The Common Prawn. Small animals which live at or near 

 the surface of the water are, if brightly colored, so small that 

 they are invisible ; if of visible size, they incline toward trans- 

 parency. The familiar prawn (Palccmone'tes vulga'ris, frontis- 

 piece), found abundantly among seaweeds near shore in sea 

 water and also in brackish and almost fresh water, is a good 

 example of a pelagic or surface-inhabiting animal of consider- 

 able size, which is so nearly transparent that it may be over- 

 looked unless it moves. The prawn, or, as it is frequently 

 called, the shrimp, is about t\vo inches long and resembles in 

 general form the lobster or the crayfish. The body is, how- 

 ever, more compressed (flattened from side to side), and more 

 strongly arched from head to tail. The carapace is thin but 



