April 27, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



651 



cf broken lobster meat. We are now main- 

 ly concerned with the restrictions placed 

 upon the fisherman in dealing with lobsters 

 which enter his traps. The protection of 

 the young alone, or what is the same thing, 

 unrestricted slaughter of adults, would be 

 equivalent to slaying the goose which lays 

 the golden eggs and must be ruled out at 

 once, for to get young we must have eggs, 

 or, what is the same thing, adults which 

 produce the eggs, and the more of them 

 the better. 



Protection of the adult alone is neither 

 practicable nor desirable, for the markets 

 should be supplied with animals of fair 

 size, and the period of sexual maturity 

 fluctuates between rather wide limits. It. 

 would, moreover, be folly to permit the 

 unlimited sacrifice of the young of all sizes 

 which could be enticed into the traps, al- 

 though the fishery might be better able to 

 stand such a drain than the wholesale sac- 

 rifice of adults. 



The keepers of domestic animals practise 

 what may be described as ' a judicious pro- 

 tection of the adult. ' That is, the relative 

 proportion of young to adults being known, 

 a balance can be struck and maintained, 

 or any desired ratio between them estab- 

 lished. In marine animals like the lobster, 

 this ratio between young and adult is an 

 unknown and unknowable quantity, and 

 this is why comparisons drawn between 

 domestic animals, which are under human 

 control, and the invisible inhabitants of the 

 depths of the sea are likely to be mislead- 

 ing. No selection or balancing of numbers 

 is possible in the way that the poultryman 

 or ranchman maintains the integrity of his 

 flocks or herds. The lobster is seldom seen 

 except when caught in a trap and brought 

 to the surface. The fishermen follow the 

 lobsters in their movements to and from 

 the shores, and when the animals which 

 enter their traps become smaller and fewer, 

 or cease altogether, they begin to wake up 



to the highly probable fact that the wild 

 'flock' has been exterminated. Yet the 

 fisherman is not to blame for this, since the 

 laws have sanctioned what practically 

 amounts to an indiscriminate slaughter of 

 the adult. 



Thus we are left to choose between the 

 methods given above. In the first, where 

 the fullest protection is given to the young, 

 the aim has apparently been to allow the 

 adult to breed at least once before it is 

 sacrificed. But this desirable end is fre- 

 quently not attained because, as will be 

 seen later, many animals pass the legal 

 limits— nine to ten and one half inches— 

 before becoming sexually mature. This 

 method has been given more than a fair 

 trial, and has proved sadly lacking. The 

 second method, as stated above, essentially 

 means protecting the adults permanently 

 beyond a certain size, and the young up to 

 a certain limit. Between these two per- 

 manently protected classes stand the imma- 

 ture or adolescent and the smaller adult 

 animals, which alone it would be permis- 

 sible to destroy. This plan was first pro- 

 posed in 1901 by Dr. George W. Field.'^ 

 He advocated a reversal of the existing 

 policy of protecting chiefly the young, by 

 placing the weight of restrictive laws upon 

 the adult animal above a certain size, when 

 it is becoming most prolific, and, therefore, 

 most valuable to the fishery. This may 

 be described as partial protection of the 

 adult and young, with emphasis on the 

 adult, and it must be admitted that such a 

 method has all the weight of biological fact 

 and sound common sense on its side. In 

 the abstract of his report which was pub- 

 lished in this journal,- the various reme- 

 dies which have been tried in vain to instil 

 new life into the waning fisheries are ably 



' Report to the Massachusetts Commissioners of 

 Fisheries and Game, 1902. 



'Science, N. S., Vol. XV., pp. 612-616, April 

 18, 1902. 



