THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
103 
joints of the claws, to prevent them from injuring each other, has been generally 
abandoned. Mutilated lobsters are now often placed in pounds, where they are 
allowed to repair their injuries. 
One has only to examine a lot of freshly captured lobsters to be assured of how 
common the practice of casting the claw is. “Out of a hundred specimens,” says 
Ratflbun ( 155 ), “collected for natural-history purposes in Narragansett Bay in 1880, 
fully 25 per cent had lost a claw each, and a few both claws.” In a total of 725 lobsters 
captured at Woods Hole in December and January, 1893-94, 54 or 7 per cent had 
thrown off one or both claws. 
It is often stated that lobsters sometimes cast their claws during thunder storms, 
but until some proof of the truth of this statement is afforded it must be regarded as 
a fable. One of the earliest versions of this idea which I have seen is that of Travis 
( 191 ), who wrote to Pennant in 1777 that — 
Lobsters fear thunder, and are apt to cast their claws on a great clap. I am told they will do 
the same on tiring a great gun, and that when men-of-war meet a lobster boat a jocular threat is 
used, that if the master does not sell them good lobsters they will salute him. 
Since autotomy is the result of a reflex nervous impulse, and has been acquired 
by the animal as a means of defense, we should expect to find that the retlex center 
would always be aroused into activity by stimuli coming through the nerves of the 
limb, as is always the case in experiment, and not through a higher center like the 
brain. When an animal is frightened by loud noises it is impelled to flee, and it would 
manifestly be of no advantage to the animal to immediately drop its legs. 
REGENERATION OF APPENDAGES. 
The regeneration of lost limbs in Crustacea has been studied by Reaumur ( 161 ) 
Goodsir ( 80 ), Ohantran ( 38 , 40 ), and Brook ( 26 ). 
Reaumur’s general account of the process in the crayfish is one of the best which 
has been written. He quotes Du Tertre ( 55 ), who had “made similar observations 
on the crabs of Guadeloupe, of which he has given a very curious history.” Reaumur 
began his experiments on the seacoast, but the sea broke and carried away his boxes 
or filled them with sand. He then experimented with crayfishes with more success. 
He says: 
I took several of them, from which I broke off a leg; placed them in one of the covered boats 
which the fishermen call “ Boutiques,” in which they keep fish alive. As I did not allow them any 
food, I had reason to suppose that a reproduction would occur in them like that which I had attempted 
to prove. My expectation was not in vain. At the end of some months I saw, and this without 
surprise, since I had expected it — I saw, I say, new legs, which took the place of the old ones, which I 
had removed; except in size they were exactly like them; they had the same form in all their parts, 
the same joints, the same movements. A kind of regeneration like this hardly less excites our euvy 
than our imagination; if, in the place of a lost leg or arm, another would grow out again, one would 
be more willing to adopt the profession of the soldier. 
He noticed tliattbe time necessary for the production of new legs was indetermi- 
nate, depending upon a variety of conditions: 
These limbs arise and grow more or less rapidly, like plants, according as the season is more or 
less favorable; the warmer days are those which hasten the more their formation and growth. 
Sometimes uew legs sprout out in three weeks; sometimes not until after six, and 
when the legs are broken off in winter they do not grow again until summer. 
