298 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water, 



Zoology, Cambridge, Mass., brought a letter dated 

 August 30, 1892, complimenting my studies on the life- 

 history of the lobster and inclosing a report to the Mas- 

 sachusetts Fish Commission, dated December 17, 1891, 

 in which he shows that his investigations proved that 

 the lobster spawned but once in two years. Therefore, 

 I have solid backing in making the statement that heads 

 this paragraph. 



"Since this I have taken, for the New York Fishery 

 Commission, a large number of lobster eggs, and have 

 turned out this year from Cold Spring Harbor, Long 

 Island, 177,000 young lobsters into the waters of Long 

 Island Sound. These were from eggs which otherwise 

 would have been sent to market with the parent and 

 have been boiled and thrown away with the shells, and 

 were therefore just so many saved from destruction 

 and given a chance to struggle for life. There is no 

 law in the State of New York relating to "berried" lob- 

 sters. The eggs number fifteen to the linear inch, and 

 measure 6,090 to the fluid ounce, are attached not only 

 to the swimmerets, but also to each other by threads, 

 and are aerated by an almost constant motion of the 

 appendages, and in confinement many eggs are loos- 

 ened and fall off, perhaps from the habit that the parent 

 has of poking among them with her legs. * * * 



"The young do not hatch until the water reaches a 

 temperature of about 60 degrees Fahr., which in Long 

 Island Sound might occur after the latter part of May, 

 and in that region the hatching season is over by the 

 middle of July, and as the mother has been feeding 

 while carrying her eggs, she can then shed her shell 

 and begin to develop the so-called "coral" that epicures 

 prize, which will form the eggs to -be laid the second 

 year, The fact that female lobsters bearing eggs out- 



