and the Maritime Provinces. 457 



States ; and, in fact, the law as passed, was drafted by one of our members, 

 the Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury. 



In view of the well-known fact that sportsmen generally are good 

 livers, and as such are interested in preserving the lobsters from extermina- 

 tion, the writer will state that, had it not been for the vigorous and long- 

 continued efforts of our association, the legal limit of ten and one-half 

 inches would, undoubtedly, have been reduced to nine inches in 1896. 



In this connection, a portion of the argument in favor of the existing 

 law, presented to the Governor at that time by President Clark, will be 

 read with interest. 



" It has been well said that the fecundity of fish is not a defence 

 against man's rapacity. It is a delusion to believe that the natural supply 

 furnished by Nature with such prodigality is unlimited and inexhaustible. 

 The practical extermination of the buffalo and the whale witness against 

 such a theory. Prof. Baird says, in regard to fish, that ' the immense 

 fecundity is an absolute necessity to preserve the balance of life under 

 water.' It must certainly be admitted that the number of lobsters taken 

 by man's agency is infinitesimal compared with the total number 

 destroyed by other causes. It is believed that on the average only two 

 lobsters mature out of each 10,000 eggs, and as man takes from the sur- 

 vival product which Nature saves, the destruction then becomes a very 

 serious factor. Those who have been familiar with the history of the lob- 

 ster in Massachusetts for the last fifty years need no demonstration of the 

 fact, fully proved by the statistics, that they are rapidly decreasing in size 

 and numbers. According to the returns, the number of large lobsters 

 taken decreased in 1894 over 1893, 52,898, and in 1895 over 1894, 140,469. 



" The evil of the destruction of the individual lobster before maturity is 

 seen in its real significance only when we consider the law of the produc- 

 tion of its eggs. Prof. Herrick, in his most interesting and comprehensive 

 work on The American Lobster, recently published by the United States 

 Fish Commission for 1895, demonstrates that the number of eggs pro- 

 duced at each reproductive period varies in a geometrical series, while the 

 lengths of the lobsters producing them vary in an arithmetical series. A 

 lobster eight inches long produces about 5,000 eggs ; one ten inches long, 

 10,000 ; one twelve inches long, 20,000 ; and one of fourteen inches, 40,000. 

 This rate ceases to be maintained later, a seventeen-inch lobster producing 

 63,000 eggs. Now, when we consider that in 100 dissections, twenty-five 

 females were found, from nine and five-sixteenths to twelve inches long, 

 which had never laid eggs, and that of seventeen out of the twenty-five which 

 were immature, six were ten and one-half inches, or more, in length, and 

 the ovaries would not have become mature for two years, a most convinc- 

 ing argument is furnished why the length at which the lobster may legally 

 be taken should be increased rather than shortened. 



