THK AMERICAN LOBSTER. 



23 



in the lobsters caught at the same time under these conditions was sufficiently marked 

 to attract attention. The lobsters captured on the rocks had hard shells and frequently 

 bore old eggs, while those taken in the Sound had in no single instance, up to this 

 time during the season, borne external eggs, either old or new, and a large number 

 of them had soft shells. These are often called "paper shells," or "buckle shells," 

 the shell being relatively soft, so that it is easily compressible with the thumb and 

 linger, and the colors are very bright, showing that they have molted within four or 

 five weeks. Special care was taken to save all egg lobsters caught, since the United 

 States Fish Commission purchased them for use in its hatchery. These "buckle shells" 

 or "school lobsters" were said to appear rather suddenly about the middle of dune or 

 first of July, and to retreat into deeper water during the first half of September. 



On the 9th of July I again visited Menemsha, and found that since the first of 

 the month only six lobsters with old eggs had been obtained. These were caught in 

 the Sound, where the majority of all lobsters now taken had soft shells. Ou the 16th 

 and 28th of July, when I made further visits to the locality, the fishery was conducted 

 almost wholly in the Sound. At the later period the fishermen had begun to shift 

 their traps to slightly deeper water, following up the lobsters in their retreat from the 

 shore. On the 1 1th of August they were fishing both in Vineyard Sound and off Gay 

 Head in 8 to 15 fathoms. A large proportion of these lobsters taken in the Sound had 

 soft shells, but au examination of the ovaries of the soft-shell females proved beyond 

 a doubt that they had hatched their old eggs and molted during the present season. 



Some very interesting facts have been brought out by the record of the fishery at 

 No Man's Land during the months of May and June, 1894. Mr. Vinal Edwards found 

 that egg-lobsters of large size could be taken there in abundance, and accordingly 

 the Fish Commission drew the supply of eggs for its hatchery from that place. Mr. 

 Edwards carefully recorded the catches of the smackmen, examining nearly every 

 lobster himself. The result is given in table 1. The traps were set on ledges of rock, 

 15 miles from land, in about 15 fathoms of water. Besides the extraordinary dispro- 

 portion of the sexes — only 6.4 per cent of males being obtained out of a total of 1,318 

 lobsters captured in May — we notice the equally remarkable and probably correlated 

 fact that 63.7 per cent of the total number are females with eggs soon to be hatched. 



Table 1. — Becord of lobsters caught off Xo Man's Land in Mai/, 1894. 



Total catch 



1,318 



Per cent of females with eggs 



63.7 



Females with eggs 



840 



Per cent of females without eggs 



29.8 



Females without eggs 



394 



Per cint of males 



.... 6.4 



Males 



84 



Per cent of females 



93.5 



Another striking fact which the fishermen noticed was the persistence with which 

 the lobsters at this time of the year clung to the rocky areas. When set ou a rock 

 bottom the traps were certain to catch lobsters in abundance, but when sunk upon a 

 saudy or muddy bottom, though but a few feet away, not a lobster was trapped. In 

 fishing on trawls, where a long line of traps was put out, it sometimes happened that 

 some of these would strike a sand bottom, often not more than a narrow streak or bar, 

 but they were always found empty. Mr. Edwards systematically fished for lobsters 

 in Woods Hole Harbor from December, 1893, to the June following. lie found them 



