54 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
difficult to say, and whether the sexual decline is gradual or not it is impossible to 
decide from the data at hand. In this connection, however, it is interesting to recall 
the fact that the male lobster attains greater size than the female. The large lobsters, 
weighing upward of 20 pounds and measuring upward of 20 inches in length, are 
invariably males, so far as my observation extends. 
The largest egg-bearing lobsters of which I have any record were taken 15 miles 
southwest of No Man’s Land, June 9, 1894, and examined by Vinal N. Edwards. One 
19 inches long, carried 91,350 eggs, which weighed 15 ounces; another, 16 inches in 
length, bore 97,440 eggs, which measured 16 fluid ounces and weighed nearly a 
pound. Mr. Edwards said that the mass of eggs was in these cases so great that the 
animals were unable to completely fold their “tails.” (See p. 34.) A lobster with 
external eggs was taken at Green Island, Maine, in November, 1892, which, according 
to Mr. F. W. Collins, weighed 184 pounds. 
Individuals 
Number of individuals laid off on ordinate. 
Number of eggs laid off on abscissa. 
The No Man’s Land lobsters seemed to carry rather more eggs than those of the 
same length captured elsewhere. Thus 234 lobsters, 13 inches long, from No Man’s 
Land produced on the average 29,526 eggs (extremes 6,090-48,720), while for 79 
lobsters caught elsewhere the average production was 26,518 (extremes as above). 
The small number examined in the last instance shows, however, that the comparison 
has little or no value. 
The variation in the number of eggs borne by lobsters of the same length is often 
very great, and is as marked in large as in small individuals. Thus in 152 cases the 
average production of 104-inch lobsters was about 11,000 eggs (the average in 532 
cases, table 15, is nearly 13,000); 32 per cent of this number bore from 12,000 to 13,000 
