NATURAL HISTORY OK AMERICAN LOBSTER. 173 



take this trade , and through it they have become very rich. Up to the present time also the English have 

 brought many lobsters from Hittland. From 30 to 40 lobster vessels come each year from Amsterdam 

 and London to Norway, and each carries from 10,000 to 12,000 lobsters . . . When a load is safely 

 landed it is very profitable, since a lobster which is bought in Norway for 2 Danish shillings is sold in 

 England for a crown. This is the fixed price for a lobster, 8 inches or over in length, the legalized 

 gauge. If a lobster lacks a claw, it is then sold for only a shilling . . The females are considered the 

 best eating. 



The lobster fisheries of Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal, and Spain are 

 relatively of minor importance at the present time, and in most cases wholly insufficient 

 to supply the home markets. Roche, in 1898 (2J7) placed the total annual value of the 

 French fisheries of the lobster and langouste at 3,114,317 francs ($622,863), of which 

 1,425,572 francs ($285,114) was represented by the lobster (Homarus gammarus). 



The yield of the lobster fisheries in the British Islands has in some years reached 

 a total of 3,000,000 lobsters, and complaints of a diminishing supply have been loud 

 and frequent. This would be a little over a third more than the returns of the Massa- 

 chusetts fishery in 1888, with its higher gauge of lo^ inches at that time. Prince 

 maintains that lobsters are so dear in England that only one person in 15 has one to eat 

 in the course of the year. (See p. 368 footnote.) 



Restrictive measures of some sort have been in force in England for a long period. 

 Thus, R. Brookes in "The Art of Angling,""* under '"necessary cautions," is careful to 

 state that "Lobsters must not be sold under Eight Inches from the Peak of the Nose 

 to the End of the Middle Fin of the Tail; the Forfeiture is One Shilling for each Lobster." 

 He remarks that "Lobsters are taken in Pots as they are call'd, made of Wicker-Work," 

 baited and set in 6 to 10 fathoms of water, or deeper, and adds: "Their Flesh is sweet, 

 restorative and very innocent." 



A review of the measures which have been taken to propagate the lobster and to 

 check the decrease in its fishery in recent times is given in chapter xii. 1 



THE CAPTURE. TRANSPORTATION, AND ACCUMATIZATION OF THE LOBSTER. 



The principle of the modern lobster trap is that of the old-fashined rat trap 

 adapted for taking an aquatic animal with as keen a scent as the rodent, but with far 

 duller wits. The device is undoubtedly of great antiquity, but as modified and applied 

 for the lobster it is apparently not over 200 years old. It was introduced to this country 

 from Europe, where, as Boeck (24) plausibly suggests, it was first applied in this way 

 by the Dutch in 1713, and was adapted from the eelpot then in use. 



Primitively lobsters were speared, gaffed, or hooked, and for a long time on the 

 coast of Norway were taken with wooden tongs about 12 feet long and adapted for use 

 in shallow water only; lobster tongs had not wholly disappeared at the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. All animals taken by such means were injured more or less severely 

 and were unfit for transportation. The gaffing of lobsters from small boats was a com- 

 mon practice in the early history of the American fishery, and a fisherman in Maine once 



« zd edition, London, 1740. 



