158 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
stage are in brief, first, their terrible cannibalism, second, 
the difficulty of keeping them properly aerated and free from 
fouling from their decaying food, third, the supply of proper 
food, fourth, protection from a growth of diatoms and other 
vegetable and animal forms, which appears on the surface of 
their bodies and prevents them from swimming and feeding. 
To combat and overcome these difficulties one by one has been 
the work of the Rhode Island Commission for the past few years. 
I will try to review briefly how this has been done. 
In 1898 Dr. H. C. Bumpus commenced a series of experi- 
ments at Woods Holl, and in 1900 some of them were trans- 
ferred to the house-boat laboratory of the Rhode Island Fish 
Commission at Wickford. Up to this time a great many de- 
vices for enclosing the fry were tried, and proved to be imprac- 
ticable, and the one which finally promised the best results 
was a scrim bag, suspended in the water so that the movements 
of the tide and wind would frequently change its shape and pre- 
vent the fry from collecting too densely m any one place. The 
meshes of the scrim, of course, allowed a free circulation of 
water through the bag; but even in this apparatus, when the 
weather was calm, the lobster fry, together with unused food, 
would settle into the pockets which were made by the weights 
necessarily used to keep the bag under water. When the weights 
were taken off, the least wind would blow the bag out of the 
water, and this was very trying to the young lobsters. Near the 
end of the season of 1900 a new principle was applied, on 
which has depended in a large measure the success of the sub- 
sequent work. 
After the numerous experiments and watching the results 
for about five weeks, the conclusion was reached that the secret 
of success in rearing the young lobsters was to keep the water 
in continuous motion. This accomplishes two things: it pre- 
vents the fry from settling into pockets to smother or devour 
one another, and it keeps food in suspension, so that the fry can 
obtain it. 
To prove the correctness of this conclusion with the mater- 
ial and apparatus at hand, it was decided to experiment with 
lobsters which were at that time in small bags. Accordingly 
the force at the laboratory was divided into watches, and the 
