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officer were appointed at each important port during the spawning 
season to receive these, that fishermen would facilitate the work by 
saving such fish as would be useful for the purpose. 
It would, not be necessary, of course, if responsible men were 
appointed to visit the important fishing grounds during the spawning 
months and strip the ripe fish, artificially fertilize the eggs, and 
return the products to the sea. It is a plan which, if carried out 
even by one boat, would soon place more ova in the sea in a season 
than all the hatcheries in the world. But the worst of it is you don't 
see the results in a tangible form as you do when you keep them in 
a hatchery and actually place them in the sea. 
The hatching of waste ova (or embryos in this case) lias 
evidently given good results in Newfoundland in the case of the 
lobster. As is well known, the great tinning factories send the 
embryos stripped from the tails of the lobsters to hatcheries, where 
they are kept until they are hatched, and then returned in suitable 
places to the sea. This could just as easily be done here, but if the 
recent bye-law of the Committee be carried into effect, the female 
lobsters ought to receive an efficient protection during the months 
of and preceding hatching and spawning. 
In this connection it would be advisable to gather, through your 
fishery officers, statistics of the proportion of male and female 
lobsters and crabs. I am confident that figures of this kind, 
obtained also from Mr. Douglas, Beadnell, would be reliable and of 
much importance. 
