804 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



"It is during the mouths of March, April, and May that the actual birth of the young 

 Lobster takes place. The females, in order to expel the embryos, now ready to burst the shells 

 of the eggs, extend their tails, make light oscillations with the fan and its appendages, so as to 

 rid themselves gradually of the young Lobsters, which they succeed in doing in a few days. The 

 young Lobster, as soon as born, makes,away from its parent, rises to the surface of the water, and 

 leaves the shore for the deep water of the sea, where it passes the earliest days of its existence 

 in a vagabond state for thirty or forty days. During this time it undergoes four different 

 changes of shell, but on the fourth it loses its natatory organs, and is, therefore, no longer 

 able to swim on the surface of the water, but falls to the bottom, where it has to remain for the 

 future; according, however, to its increase of size it gains courage to approach the shore which 

 it had left at its birth. The number of enemies which assail the young embryos in the deep 

 sea is enormous; thousands of all kinds of fish, mollusks, and crustaceans are pursuing it con- 

 tinually to destroy it. The very changing of the shell causes great ravages at these periods, 

 as the young Lobsters have to undergo a crisis which appears to be a necessary condition to their 

 rapid growth. In fact, every young Lobster loses and remakes its crusty shell from eight to ten 

 times the first year, five to seven the second, three to four the third, and from two to three the 

 fourth year. However, after the fifth year, the change is only annual, for the reason that were 

 the changes more frequent the shell would not last long enough to protect the ova adhering 

 to the shell of the female during the six months' incubation. The Lobster increases rapidly 

 in size until the second year, and goes on increasing more gradually until the fifth, when it begins 

 to reproduce, and from this period the growth is still more gradual." 



TRANSPLANTING OF THE YOUNG. For the benefit of those interested in the question of 

 breeding Lobsters by artificial means or care, we extract the following paragraph from a commu- 

 nication made by Capt. N. E. Atwood, of Provincetown, Massachusetts, to one of the New York 

 papers about fifteen years ago : 



" When we take a cargo of Lobsters on board of a fishing- smack and throw them into the 

 well, many of the young are so far developed that when they strike the water the shell of the 

 egg is broken, and you can see hundreds of thousands of little Lobsters on or near the top of the 

 water in the well. After the cargo has been taken on board, the smack sails for New York, and 

 during the whole passage the young are being hatched and are passing out through the holes in 

 the bottom of the well. On the arrival of the smack at Fulton Slip the Lobsters are taken out 

 and put in cars. If any of the eggs are on the Lobsters, not hatched, they are soon eaten off by 

 eels, which go out and in the car as they please." 



These observations of Captain Atwood are exceedingly interesting. It is probable that the 

 numerous young Lobsters hatched on the trips of the Cape Cod smacks through Long Island 

 Sound have contributed toward increasing the supply of Lobsters along that section of coast. It 

 has amounted to a transplanting of Lobsters from one prolific region to another much less prolific, 

 and the benefits thus inadvertently derived were possibly considerable. This traffic has long 

 ceased, however, and young Cape Cod Lobsters no longer find their way into the waters of Long 

 Island Sound. 



FOOD. The Lobster appears to feed upon most any kind of animal matter within its reach, but 

 is said to prefer fresh fish as bait Feeding naturally, it probably does not discriminate closely as 

 to its food. It digs clams from the bottom and removes mussels from their places of attachment, 

 soinrt lines crushing the shells in its claws, and afterwards devouring out the soft parts. Flounders 

 and other bottom fish undoubtedly fall a prey to its appetite, and it has been seen to catch nimbly 

 at small fish swimming by. Very probably it feeds upon all kinds of invertebrate life which 



