FOOD FROM THE CRUSTACEANS AND MOLLUSCA. 379 



readily and quickly assimilates, as the flesh of oysters, 

 crabs, and lobsters. For this reason they should form 

 the diet of those engaged in business or literary pursuits, 

 where much wear and tear of the nerve powers takes 

 place from day to day. Care must, of course, be taken 

 that the organs of digestion are not disturbed by too 

 large a quantity of this kind of diet. According to 

 careful observations made at the Marine Laboratory, 

 Concarneau, France, it appears that the first year the 

 lobster sheds his shell six times, the second year six 

 times, the third year four times, the fourth year three 

 times. The following shows the rate of growth of the 

 lobster after each casting of its shell : — 



After a time, lobsters and crabs cease to shed their 

 shells at all. From a lobster weighing from three to 

 three and a half pounds, six ounces of berries may be 

 obtained in the month of May; but in the month of 

 August not six ounces of eggs could probably be ob- 

 tained from a hundred lobsters. Mr. Scott, who boils 

 lobsters for Scott's, at the top of the Haymarket, states 

 that he has collected in April and May for the cooks from 

 fourteen to eighteen pounds of lobster spawn. Mr. Buck- 

 land informs us that there are 6,720 eggs in an ounce of 

 lobster spawn ; here, then, we have destroyed eggs which 

 might have represented, say in sixteen pounds of eggs, 

 no less than 1,720,320 lobsters. 



