FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



293 



" SIZE AND WEIGHT. 



" The average size of lobsters caught for market is now much less than it was in the 

 earlier days of the fishery, and their average weight is probably not over two pounds. 

 A lobster nine inches long weighs, on an average, one and one sixth pounds ; a ten- 

 and-one-half-inch lobster, one and three quarter pounds ; a twelve-inch lobster, three 

 pounds, and a fifteen-inch lobster, four to five pounds ; while a lobster twenty inches 

 long weighs twenty pounds or more. Lobsters weighing as much as fifteen or twenty 

 pounds are uncommon, and those weighing over twenty pounds are very rare. Up to 

 a recent date, the largest lobster of authenticated weight was about twenty-five 

 pounds. In 1897, however, three lobsters, each weighing over thirty pounds, were 

 taken off Sandy Hook, N. J., the weight of the largest being thirty-three pounds." 



At the Cold Spring Harbor station of this Commission lobster eggs are secured 

 from the lobster pots by scraping the naturally impregnated eggs from the swim- 



merets of the berried lobsters, and are placed in McDonald 

 hatching jars and hatched precisely as shad and smelt 

 and whitefish and tomcod eggs are hatched. The eggs 

 <ZaiM&r :aLlfe^ may hatch in two days or two weeks, for naturally the 



eggs of some females may be more advanced than others 

 at the time of capture, and when hatched the young 

 lobsters begin almost at once to eat one another. They 

 grow rapidly, and illustrations are here given of their 

 exact size at two, five, and sixteen days of age. 

 Within a few days after hatching, the young lobsters (\ 

 are planted in the harbors of Long Island, and there- 

 after they must fight their own battles for existence. 



Tt)e bellow Perd). 



The yellow perch is one of the most common of 

 pan-fishes found in fresh water and one of the best 

 for the table when taken from pure cold water. It is 

 a sweet-meated, firm-fleshed fish comparatively free of 

 bones, and though it ordinarily grows only to a few 

 ounces in weight, specimens from favored waters have 

 been taken weighing from two and one half to four 

 pounds. Not only is the yellow perch an excellent 

 pan-fish for mankind, but it furnishes food for other 

 and larger fishes. Although the perch is not protected yellow perch. 



