NATURAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN LOBSTER. 369 



tion and growth. In other words, man has been continually gathering in the wild crop, 

 but has bestowed no effective care upon the seed. The demands of a continent steadily 

 increasing in wealth and in population have stimulated the efforts of the dealers and 

 fishermen, who must work harder each year for what they receive in order to keep 

 up the waning supply. The natural result has followed, namely, a scarcity of numbers 

 and a decrease in the size of the animals caught, with steadily advancing prices paid 

 for the product. This is precisely what we should have been led to expect, had we 

 based our judgment upon any sound principles of common sense and human economy, 

 not to speak of a knowledge of the mode of life and general natural history of the 

 animal in question. 



THE PROBLEM. 



The problem before us is how to aid nature in restoring and maintaining an equi- 

 librium of numbers in the species, or how to increase the number of adult animals 

 raised from the eggs. It concerns not only the fisherman who earns a livelihood through 

 the fishery, or the dealer who has capital at stake, but the public of many lands; in 

 fact, everyone in the Western Hemisphere at least who likes the lobster for food. When 

 the decline of the already depleted fisheries became a serious menace protection was 

 sought in legislation, but since the lobster supply of this country is drawn from several 

 States and from Canada and the maritime provinces as well, no uniformity of laws 

 or methods was to be expected. Each state enacted its own laws, which were often 

 widely at variance, unscientific, and subject to continuous change. Up to the present 

 time every effort to check the constant and ever-increasing drain upon this fishery 

 has signally failed, which shows that either the laws are defective or that the means 

 of enforcing them are insufficient. 



A sound and essentially uniform code of laws for the entire fishery is plainly 

 demanded if legal restrictions are to be of much avail. 



HOW THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN MET. 



What means have been adopted in this country and in other parts to check the 

 decline of this fishery so general and so universally acknowledged ? The more important 

 restrictive measures enacted at sundry times and in divers places have been as follows : 



(i) Closed seasons of various periods in different localities. 



(2) A legal gauge or length limit — namely, 9 inches in New York, Rhode Island, 

 and Connecticut; io>2 inches in Maine, New Hampshire, and also in Massachusetts, 

 until reduced to 9 inches in 1907; 8 inches in Norway and England; and 8, 9, and 10^ 

 inches in different districts of Canada; in all cases penahzing the capture and sale of all 

 lobsters under these limits, and legalizing the destruction of all adults above the gauge. 



(3) "Egg-lobster" laws," or the prohibition of the destruction of female lobsters 

 carrying their external eggs. In addition to such legislative enactments, efforts of 

 a constructive character have been made as follows : 



oThe phrases "egg lobster," "berried lobster," or "lobster in berry," or "lobster with external eggs," are all synonymous, 

 and always mean a female with her cargo of eggs, new or old, attached to the swimming feet tmder the tail. 



