ad 
rad) 
Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
bottoms of transportation cans, not only as a preventive of rust, 
but also because the bright colored bottom permits the caretaker 
to more easily examine the fish. For the latter reason a similar 
material would be valuable for hatching troughs. 
LOBSTER HATCHING, 
The impounding of egg-bearing lobsters on the Maine coast 
during the winter of 1904 was so successful that this method of 
increasing the collections of eggs was continued during the 
winter of 1905 with equally good results. On the Massachusetts 
coast the pound is hardly worth while with the present available 
supply of lobsters, but experiments were made at the Woods 
Hole station to ascertain the practicability of carrying berried 
lobsters in live cars throughout the winter. A lot of 100 lob- 
strs were divided equally between two cars 5’x4x2’ 8". The 
cars had wooden tops and bottoms with galvanized wire cloth 
for sides and ends. Up to December 20 the cars were moored 
on the surface in the outer basin and on that date were sunk to 
the bottom of the harbor, one in thirty-six feet and the other in 
eighteen feet of water. Another lot of 300 were placed in two 
floating cars 1514’x614’x4' 8” partitioned crosswise, in the outer 
basin. All of them were fed regularly to the middle of December, 
ofter which date no food was given them until about the middle 
of March. Early in January a cold wave practically closed the 
harbor with ice and nothing more was seen of the lobsters until 
about the middle of March. In the basin where the 300 lob- 
sters were placed the ice was over a foot thick during a part of 
this period. From the middle of March until April 20 food was 
supplied regularly. The two small cars which were sunk to the 
bottom showed a loss of about 25 per cent. On taking the lob- 
sters from the two floating cars fifty-three were missing, and as 
there were no shells or other traces of them, it is possible that 
some of them were stolen. The experiment is therefore not en- 
tirely conclusive but was sufficiently successful to warrant fur- 
them attempts at penning lobsters throughout another season. 
In the matter of equipment for hatching lobsters there is a 
diversity of opinion among practical fish culturists. During the 
past four years the Woods Hole station has operated satisfac- 
