378 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

 Table 1$. 



In addition to the number of lobster fry planted by the United States Fish Com- 

 mission in 1900, there were sent to Dr. H. C. Bumpus 3,767,000 for experimental 

 use. In 1902 also, in addition to the plant recorded by the commission, 6,178,000 

 fry were used for the same purpose. 



Applying the law of survival, with life rate of 2 in 30,000, which has been shown 

 to be a fair allowance, this number of young would yield only 280,985, while there 

 must have been captured on this coast in the same period nearly 1,000,000,000 lob- 

 sters. By applying the maximum rate of 2 in 10,000, which we are assured is far too 

 large, the yield would be 842,955. To have held the fishery at an equilibrium by this 

 means, there should have been hatched 5,000,000,000,000 young, or 1,250 times as many 

 as were actually liberated. 



To take another example, the total output of all the Canadian lobster hatcheries 

 for the entire history of this fishery, 1880 to 1906, was as follows: 



Bay View, Nova Scotia, 1891-1906 j., 889, 300, 000 



Canso, Nova Scotia, 1905-6 79, 000, 000 



Shemogue, New Brunswick, 1903-1906 291, 000, 000 



Shippegaa, New Brunswick, 1904-1906 220, 000, 000 



Charlottetown and Dunk River, Prince Edward Island, 1880- 



1906 256, 085, 000 



2> 735. 38s> 000 

 Again, allowing the too generous rate of i in 5,000, this product of the activity 

 of 24 years would yield only 547,077 lobsters, or but little over the two-hundredth 

 part of the numbers caught in certain years in Canada alone. 



In cases of this kind it is as detrimental to overestimate the value of the egg as 

 to undervalue it. The eggs are true gold, although the amount which each weighs 

 is infinitesimal. Like drops of water and grains of sand, these eggs count for but 

 little singly, but in mass the inanimate particles can make the oceans and the conti- 

 nents, while the living germs can fill them with teeming inhabitants. 



We can not work on the colossal scale of nature in dealing with egg or larva, but 

 we may frustrate nature by destroying the egg producers. Nature long ago provided 

 for the cod and hundreds of other predaceous fishes; she took into account the tides, 



