176 BUI^LETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



f 



apart, to work automatically to the extent of not permitting lobsters above legal size to 



enter and of allowing the undersized to escape. 



lyobsters destined for inland markets are successfully transported with or without 

 plugging the claws, packed in wet seaweed, and with ice at the bottom. For a long time 

 nearly the entire product of the Norwegian lobster fishery (see p. 172) has been sold in 

 Bngland, the animals, usually with claws bound with cord, being carefully packed, in 

 small fish boxes, in heather wet with sea water, and in summer with ice at the bottom; 

 care is taken not only to shield them from the drip, for they can not stand fresh water, 

 but also by means of paper linings to protect them from excessive cold; always with 

 the precaution of leaving suitable openings at top and bottom to allow the air to enter 

 and the water to pass out. 



Early in the nineteenth century, according to Prince {219), several barrels of lobsters 

 were sent from Nova Scotia, as a present to King George III of England. Again in 1862 

 several tubs of lobsters in sea water were forwarded from the coast of Maine to the 

 Emperor Napoleon III of France. The longest sea journey yet made by the living 

 lobster was accomplished some time previous to 1896, when the Otago Acclimatization 

 Society of New Zealand succeeded in transplanting 9 lobsters from England, 3 only 

 having died on a voyage of 54 days, covering a distance of 12,000 miles through the 

 Tropics, where water not artificially cooled reaches a temperature of 84° F. The experi- 

 ment was repeated in 1906, and up to May 30, 1909, four shipments had been made 

 from Plymouth, England, to Portobello (Dunedin), for the fish hatchery and biological 

 station there. The last of these proved most successful, 31 out of 34 lobsters being 

 delivered alive. Each of the animals was given a separate compartment in the wooden 

 shipping tank, and was supplied with clean, well-aerated and cooled water, and was fed 

 during the voyage. 



From 1874 to 1889 five attempts to acclimatize the American lobster on the Pacific 

 coast were made by the United States Fish Commission, when 590 animals of both sexes, 

 and some with external eggs, were successfully transported across the continent and 

 distributed at different points from Monterey Bay to Puget Sound. Accounts of these 

 early experiments have been given by Perrin {319), Rathbun {228), and Smith {253, a). 



No positive results having appeared [says Dr. Smith], the experiment was renewed in the fall of 1906, 

 when a special carload of brood lobsters, numbering more than all the previous plants combined, was 

 dispatched to Puget Sound, and in 1907 a still more extensive plant, aggregating about 1,000 adult 

 lobsters, was made in the same water. Further consignments will be made until the lobster is removed 

 from the list of failures and recorded as a great financial as well as a gastronomic success {325, p. 1406). 



We believe that the Bureau has taken a most commendable step, and in the right 

 direction, the initial attempt being to find a water where the Atlantic lobster will 

 thrive. When this primary question has been settled, further importations to that 

 point, supplemented in time by artificial propagation, promise well for the eventual 

 establishment of new and remote fisheries which, for all that is now known to the con- 

 trary, may at some future day enjoy a greater prosperity even than those nearer home. 



