CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 43 



giant among them all weighed 34 pounds, and measured exactly 

 23% inches from spine to tail. All of them are males, and this 

 one was caught off the Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, in 1897, 

 was kept for a time alive at the Aquarium in New York, and its 

 skeleton may now be seen at the American Museum of Natural 

 History in that city. No doubt the Pilgrims would measure a 

 lobster as some fishermen do now, with the big claws stretched to 

 their fullest extent in front of the head. In this condition the 

 actual length of the animal is about doubled, so that the length of 

 our New Jersey record breaker, when distended in this way, would 

 reach nearly four feet, and the Pilgrim six-foot lobsters have been 

 stretched at least two. 



In an account of marketing in Boston in 1740 " oysters and lob- 

 sters " are mentioned " in course the latter in large size at 3 half- 

 pence each," and this abundance continued for over one hundred 

 years. 



To revert at once to modern times, it is not necessary to dwell 

 upon the increase in price to the consumer which has followed the 

 decrease in the supply of this animal. Many no doubt remember 

 when lobsters were sold by the piece, and at a few pennies at that. 

 Five years ago, with a market price of 25 cents per pound, a lobster 

 weighing 3 pounds 91/4 ounces cost, at an inland market in New 

 Hampshire, 90 cents. , The clear meat of the claws and tail of this 

 animal, which had a fairly hard shell, were found to constitute 

 but 27 per cent, of the whole. This would bring the cost of such 

 meat to 90 cents per, pound. Even when every edible part of 

 this animal was saved, which is seldom or never done, the total 

 waste was found to be 45 per cent., and the cost of all edible parts 

 45 cents per pound. At the present retail prices of from 30 to 35 

 cents per pound, these estimates would have to be considerably 

 increased. 



According to Mr. Eichard Eathbun,^ who was the first to give us 

 a history of the American lobster fisheries, this fishery as a sep- 

 arate industry began towards the close of the eighteenth or the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, and was first developed on 

 the coast of Massachusetts and in the region of Cape Cod and 

 Boston, some fishing being " done as early as 1810 among the 

 Elizabeth Islands and on the coast of Connecticut." " Strangely 

 enough, this industry was not extended to the coast of Maine, where 

 it subsequently attained its greatest proportions, until about 1840." 



' "The Fisheries and Fishery Industries ot the United States," Vol. II., sect, v, part 

 xxi. Washington, 1887. 



