NATURAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
379 
the storm, and the rock-ribbed coast also, by giving to this race billions of eggs each 
year; but no provision was made for millions of traps working night and day at the 
bottom of the sea to destroy the producers of these eggs. 
THE PROPAGATION OF THE LOBSTER. 
The method of rearing the young through their critical larval or pelagic period, 
until they finally go to the bottom in the fourth or fifth stages, promises material aid 
to this fishery. While opinions may differ upon most of the questions which have been 
hitherto discussed, here is a subject upon which all should be agreed, and we believe 
that the method can not be extended too far or adopted too widely. Accordingly 
we shall briefly review the history of lobster rearing. 
The first successful attempts at the artificial breeding of fish in America were 
made upon the speckled trout by Dr. Theodatus Garlick and Prof. H. A. Ackley, of 
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853, the eggs and sperm being forcibly removed from the bodies 
of the ripe animals, brought into contact, and young trout subsequently reared from 
the eggs thus artificially impregnated. 
No such results have ever been obtained in the Crustacea, nor is such a procedure 
possible in an animal like the lobster, owing to the unyielding nature of its body, due 
to a hard external skeleton. In the case of this animal we can only remove the already 
naturally fertilized and developing eggs from the underside of the abdomen, to which 
they are attached by the female herself at the time of egg laying, and afterwards give 
them such favorable conditions that the processes of development will proceed in a 
normal course to the time of hatching, as in the case of the artificial incubation of the 
eggs of fowls. 
Messrs. Guillon and Coste were apparently the first to rear lobsters in Europe in 
considerable numbers, and an account of their experiments, which were conducted at 
the laboratory of Concarneau on the coast of France, was published in 1865 by Moquin- 
Tandon and Soubeiron (202). 
How sanguine were these pioneers of the success of their experiments is shown by 
the following extracts : 
The ease with which young lobsters are reproduced and developed in the basins of Concameau is 
a sure token that upon our coasts suitable places should be readily found for establishing vivaria where 
one may obtain myriads of the young, but these should not be permitted to enter the sea until they are 
sufficiently advanced to resist most of the causes of destruction which constantly menace them. What 
we have seen since our first visit to Concameau, namely, basins literally black with little lobsters 
hatched in a vivarium , and from what we know of the habits of a great number of fishes in coming in 
immense numbers to stock particular regions of the coast, we may hope that it will be possible to regen- 
erate the fishery on parts of our shores. By means of reservoirs we should be able to create an abundant 
food supply. 
It was also stated that at the island of Tudy, M. de Cresoles had designed aquaria 
for preserving, hatching, and feeding lobsters and the Palinurus or langouste, some of 
the compartments being shaded or otherwise adapted to the animals in different stages 
of growth. 
