Photo by Walter L,. Beasley 



PROBABLY the; largest lobsters ever caught 



These two lobsters weighed, when caught, 28 and 34 pounds respectively. They were 

 taken off the Highlands of New Jersev and are now mounted in the American Museurn of 

 Natural History. Thev utilized the enormous strength of their jaws and sawlike teeth m 

 cutting holes and robbing the traps of all the bait, as their bodies were too_ large to get 

 inside. Finally they were hauled up to the surface clinging to a trap. The giant specimen 

 showed many scars, evidently from savage combats. The length of its life is estimated to 

 have been fifty years, as the average age of a ten and twelve inch lobster is thirty years. 



several instances the actual destiny of na- 

 tions and the fate of their monarchs ap- 

 pear to have been involved in the herring 

 fishery." (See National Geographic 

 Magazine, pages 701-735, August, 1909.) 



Dr. Smith reminds us that the founda- 

 tions of Amsterdam were laid on herring 

 bones, and that the prowess of the Dutch 

 navy in the days when it triumphed over 

 Britannia's banner was due directly to 

 the herring fisheries and the herring 

 fishers who manned it. 



The annual catch of herring in the 

 North Sea amounts to nearly 800,000 

 tons a year. That means the taking of 

 some six billion herring alone from the 

 comparatively small area of its fishing 

 grounds. Yet in spite of this terrific toll 



they still come in undiminished number. 

 In the matter of solid formations, un- 

 broken phalanxes, and inexhaustible num- 

 bers, the herrings have no rival. 



It is conservatively estimated that each 

 mature female herring lays 20,000 eggs. 

 Of these, 19,998 must never produce 

 spawning females; for if any more of 

 them did, speaking in averages, the North 

 Sea itself would become a solid mass of 

 herring in a comparatively few years. 

 Huxley once observed that man is but 

 one of a vast society of herring-catchers, 

 of which a thousand enemies in the sea 

 are the other members. If man took 

 none at all, he would simply swell the 

 dividends of the other members, and the 

 herring would fare no better thereby. 



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