NATURAI, HISTORY OF AMERICAN LOBSTER. 375 



lobsterling stage, which really looks like a little lobster. Either in this stage or in the 

 fifth, which follows, they go to the bottom, hide under stones, burrow in the sand, and 

 show an ability to protect themselves. The most critical period of infancy being now 

 past, one lobster at this stage is worth many thousands in the first. Therefore, our 

 efforts, to be of real avail, should not end with the hatching and immediate liberation 

 of the fry ; we should rear them to the bottom-seeking stage. 



THE LIFE RATE OR LAW OF SURVIVAL. 



What is the death rate or the rate of survival in the lobster? Upon the answer 

 to this question hinges the gauge or legal-length law, as well as the expensive practice 

 of hatching and turning loose the young, which has been pursued in this country and 

 Canada for many years (since 1886 in the United States and since 1891 in Canada). 



As was pointed out 10 years ago, too many fish culturists have been content to turn 

 out so many thousands or millions of eggs of lobsters and fish, and confidently expect 

 results, to the neglect of the most important question of the whole matter — the rate of 

 survival in the young set free, or the number of adults which can be raised from them — 

 the very end for which all the time, trouble, and money have been expended. 



In the popular mind an egg is an egg, like that of the fowl which we eat for breakfast. 

 An egg really represents opportunity or chance to survive, and its biological value to the 

 race depends upon the law or rate of survival, which was definitely fixed in nature before 

 the advent of man with his traps and hatching jars, and differs in every species of 

 animal and plant known. When the gantlet of life is long and hazardous, especially 

 in infancy, nature, as in the present case, multiplies the chances or multiplies the eggs. 

 Many eggs always means death, under natural conditions, to all but a remnant of the host. 

 The number of eggs alone serves as a rough gauge to determine the rate of survival. 



At one end of the scale stand the birds and mammals, with few eggs and the highest 

 life rate known, secured by guarding and parental instincts, with big yolks and rapid 

 development in one case and the special conditions of fetal life in the other. At the 

 other extreme we find a parasite Uke the tapeworm, where the conditions of early life 

 are so unpromising — since it must run a long hazard of chances and be eaten by two 

 distinct vertebrates — that its eggs are required by the hundreds of millions or even 

 billions. The lobster needs more eggs than the trout, and of smaller size, but far less 

 than the edible blue crab, which carries nearly five millions of eggs attached to its 

 body. Each one of these is barely visible to the unaided eye and the young which 

 issues from it must pass a long and dangerous larval period before reaching maturity. 



What, then, is the life rate or rate of survival in the lobster ? Probably not more 

 than 2 in 30,000, and certainly not ihore than 2 in 10,000. This number would be exactly 

 known, provided we knew the exact proportion of the sexes or the proportion of the 

 total number of males to the total number of females and the average number of eggs 

 laid by mature females during their entire life. The life rate accordingly would be 

 expressed by the proportion 2 -.x, in which x represents the average number of eggs 

 laid by mature females during the whole of life. 



