40 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
At the time this was written it was not known that the lobster usually carries 
her eggs for a period of ten or eleven months. It was, therefore, quite natural that 
Yerrill should misconstrue the discriminative statement of Smith { 183 ), who says: 
The season at which the female lobsters carry eggs varies very much on different parts of the 
coast. Lobsters from New London and Stonington, Connecticut, are with eggs in April and May, 
while at Halifax, Nova Scotia, I found them with eggs, in which the embryos were just beginning to 
develop, early in September. A corresponding variation is noticed in the lobster of the European coast. 
Yerrill further says { 196 , p. 745): 
Subsequent observations have shown that the breeding season of the lobster extends over a large 
part of the year. * * * Mr. Vinal N. Edwards has forwarded two living females, of medium size, 
taken iu Vineyard Sound, December 12, both carrying an abundance of freshly laid eggs. He states 
that he tinds about one in twenty carrying eggs at that seasou. 
Wlieildon says, in a paper published in 1875 { 202 ), that the assumption that the 
lobster has a definite annual spawning season is an error, and that in February of that 
year he had obtained “spawn iu several stages of development from newly laid eggs 
to the swimming larva;.” 
The following statement of a member of the local government of Prince Edward 
Island expresses an opinion upon the breeding habits of the lobster, which is as 
misleading as it is common : 
1 feel certain that the close season has not and can not accomplish anything toward the first 
object [protection for lobsters while spawning], as it is now admitted by everyone who has had any 
experience in packing, that lobsters in spawn are caught at all seasons of the year and that they 
have no particular season for spawning. 
Bumpus concludes that — 
The eggs are normally deposited during the months of July and August, and develop rapidly so 
long as the water is relatively warm. * * * Large numbers of eggs collected during the winter 
months, both from the colder waters of Nahant as well as from the warmer waters of Woods Hole, 
were almost invariably in the same advanced stage of development — the eyes large and bright, the 
appendages well outlined, and the yolk occupying but a fraction, perhaps one-third of the surface 
exposure. 
Out of hundreds of lobsters found “in berry” in May, 1890, at Woods Hole, “ not 
a single one had eggs in early stages of development.” { 30 ) 
After fluctuating from one view to another, I came to the conclusion that the 
breeding season was limited as defined in the paragraph just quoted, but as my obser- 
vations had been restricted to the summer months and to the region about Woods 
Hole, I determined to extend them to other points of the coast and to other seasons 
of the year. The results of these inquiries I will now give in detail. They may be 
summarized as follows : 
For the majority of lobsters there is a definite breeding season, which is the 
summer, July and August being the months in which the greatest number of eggs are 
laid. A minority, on the other hand, perhaps 20 to 25 per cent of the entire number 
of spawners, lay their eggs at other times of the year, in the fall and winter at least, 
if not also in the spring. The fall and winter eggs are normally extruded, and do not 
appear to be necessarily the product of the first reproductive period. A glance at 
table 12 shows that while the average size of the females is small, it is fully up to the 
average of all females captured during the same time. 
I received an “egg-lobster,” which is not recorded in the following tables, from 
Woods Hole early in December. It was 12J inches long, and its eggs were just past 
the egg-uauplius stage. If laid in July or August, they would Lave reached this stage 
in about 18 days. 
