CRUSTACEANS. 
491 
The Lobster ( Homarus ) is found in great abundance all round our 
coast; freqnonting the more rocky shores and clearwater, where it is of 
no great depth, about the time of depositing its eggs. Various are the 
modes in which they are taken : cone-shaped traps made ot wicker- 
work, and baited with garbage, are perhaps the most successful. These 
are sunk among the rocks, and marked by buoys. Sometimes nets are 
sunk, baited by the same material. In other places a wooden instru- 
ment, which acts like a pair of tongs, is used for their capture. 
Mr. Pennant, the naturalist, paid great attention to the lobsters, 
and their habits are well described in a letter from Mr. Travis, of 
Scarborough. “ The larger ones,” he says, t; are in then: best season 
from the middle of October to the beginning of May. Many of the 
smaller ones, and some few of the larger individuals, are good all the 
summer. If they are four and a half inches long from the top of the 
head to the end of the back shell, they are called sizeable lobsters ; if 
under four inches, they are esteemed half-size, and two of them are 
reckoned for one of size. Under four inches they are called pawks, 
and these are the best summer lobsters. The pincers of one of 
the lobster's large claws are furnished with knobs, while the other 
claw is always serrated. With the former it keeps firm hold of the 
stalks of submarine plants; with the latter it cuts and masticates 
its food very dexterously. The knobbed or thumb claw, as the fisher- 
men call it, is sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, side, and 
it is more dangerous to be seized by the serrated claw than the other. 
There is little doubt that the lobsters cast their shell annually, but 
the mode in which it is performed is not satisfactorily explained. It 
18 supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires 
to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to 
contend with his armour-clad congeners. Others contend that the 
Process is one of absorption, otherwise, if there were a period of moult, 
it would be shown by their shells. The most probable conjecture is 
that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The 
greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster 
"Withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering, 
fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, so as to permit 
°f its withdrawing its members from it. 
The hen lobster does not seem to cast her shell the same year 
in which she deposits her ova, or, as the fishermen say, “ is in berry.” 
