64 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
The concession to the cooks contained in the previous extracts is no more defen- 
sible than the idea that the lobster when in berry is necessarily at its best as an article 
of food. The reviewer just referred to, thus speaks upon the latter point: 
We were under the impression — a common one, we believe — that as the spawning season began 
to come on all the food eaten went chiefly to aid the growth of the innumerable eggs in the female or 
of the soft roe in the male. 
Travis ( 191 ), writing in 1768 from Scarborough — a place which still abounds in 
lobsters — says : 
It is a common mistake that a berried hen is always in perfection for the table. When her 
berries appear large and brownish she will always be found exhausted, watery, and poor. * * * 
Cock lobsters are in general better than hens in winter. 
It should be borne in mind that there is no organic connection between the 
external eggs, which are carried under the “ tail,” of the lobster, any more than 
there is between a plaster and the skin to which it is made to adhere by an adhesive 
substance. 
The case of the berried lobster and of the roe-herring are not strictly analogous, 
since the lobster is carrying her eggs which have been extruded, perhaps months 
before, while the herring is yet in the active process of producing the spawn within the 
body. 
One would suppose that the only time when the lobster could be compared as to 
the effects of spawning with fish like the salmon would be for a short period after the 
eggs were laid. But this is not exactly the case, and Travis was nearer right than 
his successors, when he maintained that the egg-lobster was an inferior article of food. 
The fact is that the egg-lobster is in poorer condition or weighs relatively less than 
the female of the same leugth without eggs. This point is illustrated more fully in 
another part of this work (see p. 119). 
The lobster at the time of egg-laying is not in as poor condition, however, as the 
shotted herring or the salmon, which at this period is worthless as food, and the 
reason is plain. The ovary of the lobster ripens slowly during a period of at least 
two years, and the production and emission of the eggs is not so severe a drain upon 
its vitality as in the case of the fish. After the eggs have been laid for some time, the 
lobster gains in flesh; the ovary resumes its slow growth, but it is a year before the 
“coral” becomes very conspicuous. The testes, corresponding to the “soft roe” of 
fishes, are always very small, and produce sperm, not at a particular period, as is the 
case with many species of fish, but probably throughout the entire year. The time 
when the adult lobster is in the poorest condition for food is when the animal is 
getting ready to cast its shell, and for a few weeks after the molt while the new shell 
is still soft. 
The destruction of a few hundred thousand eggs, or even a few millions, would 
have no appreciable effect upon the supply of lobsters at any point on the coast; but 
where the practice of taking lobsters with eggs is general throughout the range of the 
fishery, the total amount of ova or embryos which are thus killed is prodigious, and 
can not fail to lessen the number of adults. 
