THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
31 
in tlie food was noticed during the winter and spring months, and there was little 
evidence that the appetites of these animals sensibly abated during the cold weather, 
yet it is probable that food is less abundant and less necessary in winter. (See pp. 
24, note 1, and 25.) 
That lobsters catch fish alive there is no doubt, but few have ever seen this feat 
performed. Fish which inhabit the bottom, like the flounder, would naturally fall an 
easy prey to their powerful claws. They are said to catch the sculpin, and I have 
known a lobster which was confined in an aquarium at the United States Fish Com- 
mission station in the summer to seize and devour the sea-robin ( Prionotus evolans). 
The common blue crab ( Callinectes hastatus) is said to capture fish, and fishermen 
report having taken haddock on trawls with the heads almost nipped oft', as if cut by 
the claws of the lobster. 
The smaller of the large claws is essentially a pair of toothed nippers, the hard 
tips of which are incurved so as to enable the animal to secure and hold every 
object which it can fairly seize. This is sometimes called the u fish claw ” or the u quick 
claw” by fishermen in Maine, while the heavy crushing-claw is called the “ club claw,” 
and according to Travis (191) it was known in England in the last century as the 
u knobbed” or “numb claw.” 
While lobsters are great scavengers, it is probable that they always prefer fresh 
food to stale. Some fishermen maintain that there is no better bait than fresh herring. 1 
Fresh codfish-heads, flatfish, sculpins, sea robins, menhaden, and haddock are also 
used, as well as salted fish. The flesh of the shark is occasionally utilized by the Gay 
Head fishermen on account of its firmness and lasting qualities. 
In the lobster pound at Southport, Maine, the lobsters are fed chiefly upon herring 
and sculpin. The fish are scattered around the shore and over the pond. They stop 
feeding them after the 1st of December, and the fall stock is taken out for the winter 
market in January, February, and March. 
In the large lobster pound at the Yinal Haven Islands I have seen the muddy 
bottom scored in all directions — the work of lobsters in their search for clams. One 
is there reminded of a pasture in which the soil has been rooted up by pigs. As a fish- 
erman remarked, if you put lobsters in a pound and do not feed them, they will soon 
turn over the bottom as effectively as it could be done with a plow. Some of the holes 
which the lobsters had made in digging clams were 2 feet in diameter and 6 inches 
or more in depth. Here they had dug up the eelgrass, or loosened it so that it had 
floated to the surface, and cartloads of it had been cast ashore. We have already 
seen that lobsters sometimes eat parts of this plant, 2 but they had plainly rooted it up 
in this case with another object in view. The broken and often comminuted shells 
of the long-necked clam (My a arenaria) could be seen strewn everywhere about their 
excavations. 
The lobster probably attacks such large and powerful mollusks as the conchs, 
which live upon hard bottom, in deep water, and devours their soft parts. An illustra- 
'I am told by Mr. M. B. Spinney, of Cliffstone, Maine, that many years ago, when lobsters were 
very abundant, he and his father used “wash bait” in taking them. Fish, such as the mackerel, were 
minced up and put overboard. Then, as lobsters came flocking from all directions about the boat, 
they would gaff them. 
2 The grass- wrack, or eelgrass ( Zostera 'marina ), belongingto the pond-weed family ( Naiadacea p, is, 
with one or two exceptions, the only flowering plant found growing submerged in salt water on the 
New England coast. 
