THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 117 
June, 1893, a large male lobster which weighed 20 pounds. In the same lot was one 
weighing 16 pounds. 
In May, 1892, Mr. N. F. Trefethen obtained a lobster from the vicinity of East- 
port, Maine, which weighed 15^ pounds. He weighed it himself, and sent it to market. 
It had a very hard shell and had lost its smaller claw; if it had been perfect it 
would have weighed considerably more. 
In August, 1891, according to Mr. F. W. Collins, a lobster (sex undetermined) 
was taken at Blue Hill Falls, 40 miles east of Rockland, which weighed 18£ pounds, 
and in November, 1892, a perfect female lobster was taken at Green Island, Maine, 
which weighed 18 pounds. This outer island is noted for its line lobster fishing. Mr. 
Collins states that in August, 1891, he had fifty lobsters at one time in his establish- 
ment which would weigh from 10 to 18J pounds. About half of these came from 
Castine and the remainder from Blue Hill Falls, Maine. All of these were “new shell 
lobsters” — that is, they had shed that year, probably in July. 
Mr. Thomas Garrett, who was one of three men who first engaged in lobster 
fishing at Yinal Haven, Maine, over forty years ago, and has been engaged in this 
pursuit most of the time since, says that he has taken a great many lobsters which 
would weigh from 15 to 20 pounds. He says that a perfect male lobster weighing 30 
pounds 1 was taken in a hoop-net in Golden Cove, in Vinal Haven Harbor, in about the 
year 1858, and that in 1887 a lobster was caught in the basin (near the site of the 
present lobster pound on Vinal Haven Island) which weighed 11 pounds and had only 
one large claw. 
The mouth of the Skillings River is said to have furnished large lobsters in 
plenty in the fall of 1888. It was very common to take lobsters there weighing 15 
pounds. The place had not been previously fished with regularity, but it soon became 
the resort of fishermen and the lobsters were rapidly reduced m numbers and size. 
Fishermen in Rockland, Maine, have gaffed lobsters in the harbor in the past two 
years weighing from 8 to 9 pounds. I heard of a large lobster which was caught on a 
trawl, the hook catching in a joint of the shell, in June, 1892, on White Island grounds, 
near Vinal Haven. It was said to have weighed over 20 pounds. 
Mr. F. W. Collins informs me that he received at Rockland, in 1893, a larger 
number of lobsters than usual measuring about 15 inches in length and weighing 
about 5 pounds. 
These notes furnish evidence, if any were needed, that very large lobsters, weigh- 
ing 20 pounds or more, are even now occasionally taken, but I have never obtained 
any reliable evidence that lobsters weighing over 25 pounds have ever been caught. 
Where lobsters are said to have attained a greater weight, measurements of the parts 
of the skeleton which have been preserved invariably prove that the figures have 
been exaggerated. I do not maintain that the American lobster does not reach a 
greater weight than 25 pounds, but that I have been unable, up to the present time, 
to discover any well-authenticated evidence that this is the case. 
Many points on the coast of Maine and the Maritime Provinces still furnish large 
lobsters weighing 10 pounds or more, but not in any considerable number, and lobsters 
of 5 pounds weight are frequently common; yet it is at the same time true that the 
size of the lobster has been declining for many years, until the average weight has, in 
most places, fallen below 2 pounds. 
1 Tlie weight of this large lobster may have been unintentionally exaggerated. One can hardly 
avoid such an inference from the evidence already given. 
