Salt-Water Fish. 299 



side, while others have the coral inside, are taken in 

 winter, supports the theory of biennial spawning. 

 August 16, 1893, I took a lobster from a car, which the 

 owner told me had spawned two days before. The 

 microscope could detect nothing in the eggs, because 

 the yolk filled them entirely. Four days later the yolk 

 had shrunken and the "mulberry" stage could be seen' in 

 the clear space, and by the 25th the eye was visible. 

 The eggs are dark when first laid, and grow lighter in 

 color as they develop. From this until October no 

 change was seen." 



The pump broke and they died. 



There is no food for a larval lobster known to me 

 that is as acceptable as another larval lobster that has 

 just molted. I have tried to bribe them by hanging 

 flesh of eel, clam, beef, lobster (adult), blue crab, and 

 fiddler crab, but without avail ; their love for their fel- 

 lows which prompted them to take their brethren in out 

 of the wet, lest they might be devoured by small fishes, 

 baffled my efforts, and there was no resource but to 

 plant the fry as soon as hatched. If each youngster 

 could be placed in a tank, or even a small compartment, 

 by itself, no doubt it would accept any, or all, of the 

 foods named, but at present we are not prepared to feed 

 a million or more individual lobsters in separate stalls 

 for months before turning them out to shift for them- 

 selves. They cannot be reclaimed from cannibalism by 

 any known means. They are fighters by nature, and 

 when a lobsterman has a lot of adults in a floating car 

 and a storm comes up each lobster blames his neighbor 

 for any collision that may ensue, and they engage in a 

 general fight, which is not only disastrous to them- 

 selves, but to the lobsterman, for lobsters are not mar- 

 ketable in fragments. 



