74 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
When, however, we glance at the data from No Man’s Land, it is evident that 
something besides chance has caused the overwhelming preponderance of females, 
1,469 per cent. It seems almost certain that this condition of things is only tempo- 
rary, and it may be explained, as I have suggested in another place (see pp. 23,24), in 
relation with the inshore migration aud the hatching of the eggs. 
Regarding the relative abundance of the sexes of the lobster, Yerrill ( 196 ) remarks : 
Among those which I have examined from New London, Waterford, and Stonington, Connecticut, 
in our markets, I have not noticed any marked inequality in the number of the sexes. Mr. Smith 
examined the lobsters in the market at Provineetown on two occasions, in August and September, 
without finding any decided differences in the number of males and females. He also repeatedly 
examined those in the fish-markets at Eastport, Maine, in summer, with the same result. 
Capt. N. E. Atwood published in 1866 a paper on the habits of the lobster in 
the proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History (5), in which he makes 
the following remarks: 
From Plymouth northward and eastward [lobsters] are caught in deep water in the months of Feb- 
ruary aud March, hut not in large quantities ; as the season advances they come near the shore and 
remain through the spring, summer, and autumn, and are very plentiful. Along this range of coast 
three-quarters at least are males at all seasons of the year. At Cape Cod (Provineetown) their habits 
differ very much from the habits of the lobsters on the north shore. They do not come there until 
June and remain until October, when they disappear and go to parts unknown. One very singular 
fact I have noticed is, that the lobsters which visit Cape Co, d are nearly all females; they appear to 
come near the shore for the purpose of depositing their young, after which they pass away and others 
in turn take their places, as is indicated by the change that is constantly taking place, for when the 
fishermen are catching great quantities of large, good liard-shelled lobsters — and they are unusually 
abundant — perhaps the next day there will be a new kind, smaller and not of so good quality, the 
former ones having passed away and others come to take their places. 
In Boston the number of lobsters sold annually can not be much short of a million. The 
male lobster is preferred and is the most salable, as this city has always been supplied from the 
northern shore of Massachusetts and coast of Maine, where the males are most plentiful. It is a great 
advantage to the fishermen that the people prefer males. In New York it is very different in this 
particular, the city being supplied from Cape Cod after June, and the female lobsters thus considered 
much the best. I have sold many lobsters in New York, and males sell at only about half price. The 
male is much poorer than the female in meat. 
I have quoted the foregoing passages at some length, not because they are free 
from error, but because they were written by an intelligent fisherman at a time when 
scarcely anything was known of the habits and general biology of the American lobster. 
If such a preponderance of females actually occurred on the shores of Cape Cod it may 
have been a seasonal phenomenon, similar to that observed at No Man’s Land. It 
did not exist in August and September, when the observations of Professor Smith 
were made at a later period. 
The statement that males are more plentiful than females on the northern shore 
of Massachusetts and the coast of Maine is without doubt an unsupported generali- 
zation. Conflicting statements in regard to this subject are often given by fishermen, 
who, as Yerrill suggests, probably do not often discriminate the sexes when the females 
are without eggs. The only detailed facts which we possess on this subject are those 
recorded in tables 21 and 22, and they seem to point to the conclusions already drawn. 
