THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
63 
any legislation on this point. The following extracts from the testimony relating to 
this subject is interesting. A witness from London says (28): 
There is a difficulty in throwing hack the berried hens. They are generally worth twice as much 
as any other lobsters. The spawn is bruised and put into sauce, and makes better sauce than the 
lobster itself. In salads it is boiled, and sprinkled over the salad. It is a capita.] article of food. 
The spawning hens are of value to the cooks, who won’t have lobsters without spawn. The sale of 
berried hens must not be prohibited, as it would be preventing the fishermen from taking the most 
fish. The production of the lobster is so enormous that if a gauge were fixed the taking of a few 
berried hens would make no appreciable difference. Berried heus are in the best possible condition 
as food. They form fresh spawn immediately after they have cast their spawn. If they have no spawn 
outside, they are full of red coral inside. 
In bis .Report on the Fisheries of Norfolk, Bucklantl (29) says: 
The lobster is never so good as when in the condition of a berried hen. Berried hens occur most 
frequently in April, May, and June. They begin to lose their berries about July, but still many 
berried hens occur in July. The use of the berries is almost entirely devoted to cooking; they are 
used in many preparations by the West End chefs, especially for coloring and enriching sauces. The 
“chefs” are also fond of coral out of the body of the lobster. 
The evidence of a manager of a shellfish factory in the Haymarket is quoted as 
follows (29) : 
Mr. Sheppard, who boils lobsters for Scotts’, at the top of the Haymarket, informs me that he has 
taken from one lobster (weighing 3 to 3] pounds) 6 ounces of berries in the mouth of May. In August, 
out of 100 lobsters he would not be able to get 6 ounces of eggs from the whole. On the 5th of August 
he had 26 crabs, not one of which carried any spawn. In the month of May a great proportion of 
these 26 hen crabs would be full of sp rwn. The eggs from the berried hens are used for coloring 
various sauces; the berries are often mashed up in the sauce, a little anchovy added, and then it 
is called “lobster sauce.” In order to supply these eggs for sauce to the cooks, Mr. Sheppard has 
collected in April and May from 14 to 18 pounds of lobster spawn. I find that there are 6,720 [eggs] in an 
ounce of lobster spawn. Here, then, we have destroyed eggs which might have represented, say, in 16 
pounds of eggs, no less than 1,720,320 lobsters. A very good substitute for lobster spawn could be 
made by boiling logwood ( !). He considers that all berried hens should be returned to the water all 
the year round. 
The number of eggs borne by the female lobster is considered on pp. 50-55. A 
15-inch lobster sometimes carries nearly 100,000 eggs, which weigh a pound. 
The reasons urged by the commissioners for not indorsing the recommendation to 
prohibit the sale of berried lobsters are remarkable as examples of logic. Thus, they 
said “ if it were illegal to take berried lobsters it would not pay the fishermen in many 
cases to pursue the lobster fishery. In the next place, the lobster, when berried, is 
in the very best possible condition for food; and it would be as illogical, therefore, to 
prohibit its capture as to prohibit the taking of full herrings.” Furthermore, it is said 
that if the sale of berried lobsters were made illegal u the fishermen would probably 
remove the berries. The berries would no longer be seen in the market, but berried 
lobsters would be killed as much as ever. Berried lobsters are, it must be remembered, 
especially valuable; the berries are in great demand for sauce and for garnish for fish 
and salad.” (28, p. xvi.) “Accordingly,” says a writer in the Quarterly Review (213), 
u we must run the risk of exterminating a valuable animal to please our cooks.” 
Mr. Buckland says again, in his Report on the Fisheries of Norfolk : 
There are, I regret to say, many difficulties in the way of preventing berried hens being destroyed, 
the principal one being that, unlike the salmon, lobsters when carrying eggs are at their very best for 
human food. Notwithstanding this, it must he evident that the destruction of so many lobsters in 
the form of eggs must of necessity greatly tend to produce that scarcity of lobsters which is now being 
felt in the London and other markets. 
