84 SEA-SHORE LIFE 



but blue, red or cream-colored lobsters are sometimes seen. It is a 

 great burrower, digging holes with its claws fully two feet deep, 

 aad then entering the burrow tail first. It feeds upon almost any 

 dead animal it m.ay find and will readily capture living fishes, or 

 other marine animals, including young lobsters. These are torn to 

 pieces in its large claws, and then still further ground up in the 

 "gastric mill" or gizzard-like teeth of the stomach. Cod and other 

 fishes destroy countless numbers of lobsters. 



The eggs are usually laid in July or August, and adhere to the 

 abdominal aj^pendages of the female, while the great tail "fin," or 

 telson, is folded forward so as to cover them. In this condition they 

 are carried for about eleven months, so that they usually hatch 

 between May 15th and July 15th. A female eight inches long will 

 layabout 5,000 eggs, while one seventeen inches in length will pro- 

 duce fully 63,000. Individual lobsters do not spawn oftener than 

 once every two years. 



The little lobsters are about one-third of an inch long, and as 

 transparent as glass, so that one may see their internal organs 

 clearly. They immediately rise to the surface, and their feathered 

 feet enable them to swim actively about. The claws are now very 

 small, and the whole creature is shrimp-like in appearance. The 

 little creatures swim at the surface for five or six weeks, devouring 

 a great variety of minute animals, and not hesitating to bite off the 

 legs of other young lobsters whom they may chance to meet. They 

 moult six times and then sink to the bottom, and crawl into shallow 

 water, where they remain hidden away under stones until autumn. 

 On the approach of cold weather all of the lobsters crawl out into 

 deep water, never going, however, to a depth much greater than (iOO 

 feet. They seem to prefer waters of a temperature of about 55° F. 

 Professor Bumpus has shown that lobsters wander over the bottom 

 to a considerable extent; one individual went twelve miles in 

 three days. 



Our lobster fisheries are worth at least $1,500,000 annually, 

 but unless wise laws are soon enforced for their protection the ruth- 

 less persecution to which the lobsters have been subjected will prac- 

 tically exterminate them, in so far as commerce is concerned. No 

 lobster under 104^ inches in length should be sold, and no female 

 carrying eggs should be killed. An excellent description of the 



