60 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Bell (14, pp. 248-249) has given the following account, furnished him by Mr. Peach, 
of the way in which lobsters were supposed by fishermen to protect their young. 
Hardly a word of it is true, but it is a good example of the pseudo- scientific literature 
to which I have referred, and on this account is worth quoting: 
I have heard the fishermen of Goram Haven say that they have seen in the summer , frequently, 
the old lobsters with their young ones around them. Some of the young have been noticed six inches 
long. One man noticed the old lobster with her head peeping from under a rock, the young ones playing 
around her : she appeared to rattle her claws on the approach of the fisherman, and herself and young 
took shelter under the rock; this rattling, no doubt, was to give the alarm. I have heard this from 
several, some very old men, who all speak to this without concert, and as a matter of course; and they 
are men I can readily believe. 
Young lobsters 6 inches long hardly require protection; smaller ones (an inch 
long) are rarely seen by fishermen, and old and young separate as soon as the latter 
are hatched. 
The writer of a popular magazine article, in quoting a fisherman, thus speaks of 
the habits of young lobsters: 
The mother is often seen surrounded by baby lobsters a few inches in length, who take refuge 
under her tail in case of danger. (The Lobster at Home, by William R. Bishop, Scribner’s Monthly, 
vol. xxii, 1881, p. 212.) 
Erdl (62) says of the green crab (Carcinus mcenas ), that it often appears to play 
with small, round stones and with empty snail shells, just as cats play with balls. 
(“Manclimal scheint mit kleinen runden steinen, mit leeren Sckneckenkausen wie die 
Katzen mit den kugeln zu spielen.”) Here, doubtless, the writer was misled by his 
imagination: in the former instance we have a popular error which seems to have 
crossed the Atlantic Ocean with emigrants to the New World. 
Of the hatching of the eggs of the European lobster, which were thought to be 
laid in the sand by some of the older naturalists (see p. 36), Travis (191) curiously 
remarks : 
Though the ova are cast at all times of the year, they seem only to come to life during the warm 
summer months of July and August. Great numbers of them may then be found, under the appear- 
ance of tadpoles, swimming about the little pools left by the tides among the rocks, and many also 
under their proper form, from half au inch to 4 inches in length. 
VARIATIONS IN THE TIME OF HATCHING. 
According to Mr. Nielsen, the hatching period of the lobster in Newfoundland 
begins about the first week in July and continues until the 15th or 20th of August, 
the majority of the eggs hatching from the 15th or 20th of July to the 20th of August. 
It is thus from three to six weeks later than at Woods Hole, which is what we might 
expect from the difference in the temperature of the ocean at these points. It is not 
yet known to what extent the time of hatching and period of embryonic development 
varies from the normal course at the most divergent points on the coast; but it would 
not be surprising if young were hatched at almost any time from late summer until 
spring, owing to the irregularity in the production of eggs already pointed out. 
Mr. Nielsen hatched a number of lobsters in floating incubators during November 
in Newfoundland, and Mr. Rathbun (158) gives the following account of the hatching of 
some lobsters at the Woods Hole station by Capt. H. C. Chester, in November, 1885: 
The eggs were detached from the lobster and placed in the “McDonald” jar November 5. They 
began to hatch November 8, three days afterwards, and continued hatching for a few days longer, but 
