THE AMERICAN LOBSTER 13 



off of more than 7,000,000 pounds, or over 2;> per cent, but an increase in the market 

 value of the output of over $200,000, or nearly 25 per cent. These figures illustrate 

 very forcibly the decline which, unless speedily cheeked, threatens to destroy this 

 valuable fishery. 



Five attempts to transport lobsters alive across the continent and plant them in 

 the Pacific Ocean have been made by the United States Fish Commission (157), in 

 1875-1889, and all but the first have proved successful. No evidence bas, however, 

 yet appeared to show that the lobster has multiplied and thriven in its new environ- 

 ment. More recently attempts have been made, with some degree of success, to ship 

 lobsters across the Atlantic, and deliver them alive in the markets of London and 

 Paris. 



England, France, and Germany are the principal markets for the export trade 

 outside of the United States, but, like other preserved meats, the canned lobster is 

 shipped to all parts of the world. 



VIII. 



Civilized man is sweeping off the face of the earth, one after auother some of its 

 most interesting and valuable animals, by a lack of foresight and selfish zeal unworthy 

 of the savage. If man had as ready access to the submarine fields as to the forests 

 and plains, it is easy to imagine how mucb havoc he would spread. The ocean indeed 

 seems to be as inexhaustible in its animal life as it is apparently limitless in extent 

 and fathomless in depth, but we are apt to forget that marine animals may be as 

 restricted in their distribution as terrestrial forms, and as nicely adjusted to their 

 environment. Thus, as we shall see, the American lobster occupies only a narrow 

 strip along a part of the North Atlantic coast, and while it is probably not possible 

 to exterminate such an animal, it is possible to so reduce its numbers that its fishing 

 becomes unprofitable, as has already been done in many places. 



The only ways open to secure an increase in the lobster are to protect the spawn- 

 lobsters, or to protect the immature until they are able to reproduce, or to take the 

 eggs from the lobsters themselves and hatch them artificially. The latter is the 

 method which has been adopted and is now in use in the British Maritime Provinces, 

 and less extensively in the United States. 



In an earlier paper, published in the United States Fish Commission Bulletin for 

 1893 (pp. 75-86), I have discussed the question of the artificial propagation of the 

 lobster, and have called attention to what seem to me the weakest points in the 

 present method and what the most promising field for future experiments. 



Adelbert College, Cleveland, Ohio, 



June, 1895. 



