HISTOBY OF THE LOBSTEK AND GRAB. 275 



when she has spawned, carries her eggs under the tail, therefore if 

 every female spawned once a year, in the summer and autumn, it 

 would necessarily follow that in January and February every 

 mature female would be carrying eggs, and this is not the case. 

 Another reason given by the American investigator is this : when a 

 female, whose eggs are hatching, is killed, it is found that the ovary 

 inside does not contain eggs nearly ready to be laid, but is in a 

 condition which shows that many months must elapse before a new 

 crop of eggs is shed. This, however, is a matter in which 

 erroneous conclusions might easily be drawn, 



Ehrenbaum, a German naturalist, who studed the lobster at 

 Heligoland, took careful notes of the proportion of egg-bearing 

 females among the lobsters captured at various times of the year. 

 He found that on the average not more than 25 per cent, of the 

 females carried eggs, and it follows from this that the lobster on the 

 average only spawns once in four years. It has been pointed out, 

 however, that this is only the proportion in the lobsters caught, and 

 that the egg-bearing lobsters may be more difficult to catch, may 

 avoid the traps, and in that case the real proportion of egg-bearing 

 females would be different. 



It is evident, however, that in the uncertainty which prevails 

 upon the question, it is of considerable importance to try by keeping 

 females in confinement whether they ever do spawn immediately 

 after hatching a brood of eggs. Last season (1897) at Falmouth, 

 a number of egg-bearing or " berried '' female lobsters were 

 obtained and kept in a box in order to obtain larvae from the eggs, 

 and to try to rear these. Concerning the rearing experiments, I do 

 not desire to report here. But after all the eggs were hatched, I 

 kept the females alive. They were kept in a box floating in the 

 water at Falmouth Docks, and were regularly fed. There were five 

 of these females, and I put two males with them, in order that 

 they might be able to breed if they were capable of spawning the 

 same year. When I examined them, on Oct. 14th, I found one of 

 them had beneath the tail a full and healthy crop of newly spawned 

 eggs. 



This observation conclusively proves that the same female may, 

 after hatching a brood of eggs in summer, produce a new brood a 

 few months later in the autumn. In such a case the female would 



