THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
23 
in the lobsters caught at the same time under these conditions was sufficiently marked 
to attract attention. The lobsters captured on the rocks had hard shells and frequently 
bore old eggs, while those taken in the Sound had in no single instance, up to this 
time during the season, borne external eggs, either old or new, and a large number 
of them had soft shells. These are often called “ paper shells,” or ‘‘buckle shells,” 
the shell being relatively soft, so that it is easily compressible with the thumb and 
finger, and the colors are very bright, showing that they have molted within four or 
live Aveeks. Special care was taken to save all egg lobsters caught, since the United 
States Fish Commission purchased them for use in its hatchery. These “buckle shells” 
or “school lobsters” were said to appear rather suddenly about the middle of June or 
first of July, and to retreat into deeper Airnter during the first half of September. 
On the 9th of July I again vd si t ed Menemsha, and found that since the first of 
the month only six lobsters with old eggs had been obtained. These were caught in 
the Sound, where the majority of all lobsters now taken had soft shells. < )n the 16th 
and 28th of July, when l made further visits to the locality, the fishery was conducted 
almost wholly in the Sound. At the later period the fishermen had begun to shift 
their traps to slightly deeper water, following up the lobsters in their retreat from the 
shore. On the 11th of August they were fishing both in Vineyard Sound and off Gay 
Head in 8 to 15 fathoms. A large proportion of these lobsters taken in the Sound had 
soft shells, but an examination of the ovaries of the soft-shell females proved beyond 
a doubt that they had hatched their old eggs and molted during the present season. 
Some very interesting facts have been brought out by the record of the fishery at 
No Man’s Land during the months of May and June, 1894. Mr. Vinal Edwards found 
that egg-lobsters of large size could be taken there in abundance, and accordingly 
the Fish Commission drew the supply of eggs for its hatchery from that place. Mr. 
Edwards carefully recorded the catches of the smackmen, examining nearly every 
lobster himself. The result is given in table 1. The traps were set on ledges of rock, 
15 miles from land, in about 15 fathoms of water. Besides the extraordinary dispro- 
portion of the sexes — only 6.4 per cent of males being obtained out of a total of 1,318 
lobsters captured in May — we notice the equally remarkable and probably correlated 
fact that 63.7 per cent of the total number are females with eggs soon to be hatched. 
Table 1. — Record of lobsters caugh t off No Man's Land in Mag, 1894. 
Total catcli 
1,318 
Per cent of females with eggs 
.... 03. 7 
Females with eggs 
840 
Per cent of females without eggs 
29.8 
Females without eggs 
394 
Per cent of males 
.... 0. 4 
Males 
81 
Per cent of females 
.... 93.5 
Another striking fact which the fishermen noticed was the persistence with which 
the lobsters at this time of the year clung to the rocky areas. When set on a rock 
bottom the traps were certain to catch lobsters in abundance, but when sunk upon a 
sandy or muddy bottom, though but a few feet away, not a lobster was trapped. In 
fishing on trawls, where a long line of traps was put out, it sometimes happened that 
some of these would strike a sand bottom, often not more than a narrow streak or bar, 
but they Avere always found empty. Mr. Edwards systematically fished for lobsters 
in Woods Hole Harbor from December, 1893, to the June following. He found them 
