10 BULLETIN OF. THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



V. 



Although the lobster has a place in the literature of the Old World, it is seldom 

 mentioned by American writers. Eathbun, who was the first to give a history of the 

 American lobster fisheries, says that the great abundance and rare flavor of the 

 lobster "are not infrequently mentioned in the early annals of New England, and it 

 probably formed an important element in the food-supply of the seacoast inhabitants 

 of colonial times. As a separate industry, however, the lobster fishery does not date 

 back much, if any, beyond the beginning of the present century, and it appears to 

 have been first developed on the Massachusetts coast, in the region of Cape Cod and 

 Boston, although some fishing was done as early as 1810 among the Elizabeth Islands 

 and on the coast of Connecticut. Strangely enough this industry was not extended 

 to the coast of Maine, where it subsequently attained its greatest proportions, until 

 about 1840." (156.) 



In an account of marketing in Boston in 1740, among various kinds of meats and 

 game, "oysters and lobsters" are mentioned "in course, the latter in large size at 

 3 half-pence each." (200, vol. n, p. 540.) 



Kalm, the Swedish traveler, writing in 1771, thus speaks of the abundance of sea 

 food on the shores of Long Island: 



The soil of the southern part of the island is very poor; hut this deficiency is made up hy a vast 

 quantity of oysters, lobsters, eral>s, several kinds of fish, and numbers of water fowl, all of which are 

 there far more abundant than on the northern chores of tbe island. Therefore the Indians formerly 

 chose the southern part to live in, because they subsisted on oysters and other productions of the sea. 

 (IDS, vol. 2, pp. 226-227.) 



The older writers had little to say of the sea and its products in New England, 

 yet many interesting facts could probably be gathered by a, careful examination of all 

 available sources. 



VI. 



Lobsters are caught in pots or traps made of laths, nailed to a wooden frame, 

 with a funnel-shaped opening at each end. The traps are commonly 4 feet long, ti feet 

 wide, and 18 inches high. The funnels are usually netted out of manila twine. The 

 pots are weighted with stones or bricks, and set either in single warps or in trawls of 

 from 8 to 40 pots each. Each pot has a buoy line to which a wooden spindle-shaped 

 buoy is attached. The latter bears the owner's mark or stamp, and shows the position 

 of the trap. The traps are baited with fish, such as herrings, sculpins, or flounders, 

 and the lobster, when once induced to come inside the pot, seldom escapes, unless small 

 enough to crawl between the slats. It has been estimated that half a million lobster 

 traps have been in use in the Maritime Provinces during a single year. 



The old-fashioned hoop nets formerly in use consisted of a single iron ring or hoop 

 to which a net with cord was attached. When baited they had to be closely watched 

 and pulled up from time to time, in order to secure the lobster before he could get out 

 of the net. 



The lobster fishery is conducted chiefly in the spring and summer months. The 

 pots are tended from small boats, and the catch is kept in floating cars moored in 

 some protected spot near the shore. Welled fishing smacks, or more rarely welled 

 steamers, gather up the lobsters from the fishermen and cany them to the canneries 

 and to the markets in the large distributing centers, such as Portland, Boston, and 

 New York. Lobsters are shipped alive in barrels, with ice in summer, to many parts of 



