THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 
123 
At tlie lobster pound in Yinal Haven, Maine, which I visited on August 26, 1893, 
1 examined a number of lobsters whose bodies and free appendages supported a 
surprisingly varied flora. A hard-shelled female which I took out of the mud in 
very shallow water was decorated with alga; in a very striking fashion upon the upper 
part of the body, the big claws, and antenna?. The long whip-like “ feelers ” were 
weighed down with fronds of the brown laminaria, or devil’s apron, as shown in 
fig. 118, plate 36. The common green lettuce ( Ulva latuca ) was sprinkled freely over 
various parts, and barnacles had gained also a foothold upon the shell. A frond of 
laminaria, which was fixed to the side of the abdomen, was 7 inches long and 2 to 3 
inches in width. Besides the larger fronds, there was a matted undergrowth upon 
the antennae, composed of several species of algae and attached fungi. One of the 
men employed at this pound said that he had taken hard-shell lobsters with u kelp” 
2 feet long growing upon the shell. 
A lobster now in the Peabody Museum of Yale University was iucrusted with 
Nullipores, when it was captured in Nantucket in April, 1880. This specimen was 
a male and weighed about 10 pounds. 
Mussels sometimes glue themselves in extraordinary numbers to the under sides 
of the bodies of living lobsters, iu places where the animal is unable to scratch them 
off'. A good illustration of this may be seen in the museum of the Peabody Academy 
of Science at Salem, Massachusetts, where there is a male hard-shelled lobster about 
12 inches long with fifty or more shells of the common Mytilus edulis attached to its 
body. The shells of some of these bivalves are 1£ inches long. They have wedged 
themselves between the bases of the thoracic legs, the plates of the tail-fan, and have 
fastened themselves even to the head between the antennae and about the eyes. 
It is not uncommon to find the barnacle ( Balanus balanoides ), as we have already 
seen, attached to the shell of both very old and relatively young lobsters (fig. 1, plate 
1). The large Belfast lobster carried about with it several species of mollusks, as 
well as barnacles and hydroids. 
Ou July 15, 1894, 1 found a lobster which had been kept for several days, or perhaps 
for a longer time, iu a floating car, with one of its eyes completely hooded by a colouy 
of bryozoa. When set free, the eye appeared perfectly normal. 
The messmates of the young lobster consist chiefly of fungi (of which bacteria are 
the most characteristic) and of diatoms. Young lobsters captured at sea seem to be 
peculiarly free from foreign matter of every kind, but when theyouugof almost any of 
the Crustacea are confined they soon become clogged with solid organic or inorganic 
floating particles and bacteria with which such material is invariably associated. The 
hairs which garnish the body and appendages of crustacean larvae serve to gather 
up and hold solid particles from the water, so that one of the first considerations in 
the artificial rearing of Crustacea is to give them as clean a water supply as possible. 
I have seen larvae iu the fifth stage of development literally covered with a mass 
of diatoms ( Tabelaria , Navicula , etc.) like those found in the brown sediment at the 
bottom of the jar in which they lived and in the undigested food contained in their 
stomachs. Old lobsters, in which the molting period has become very infrequent, 
are commonly the worst sufferers from enemies of this kind, but the physiological 
condition of the animal is, as we have seen, the most important consideration. 
The crayfish, which is devoured eagerly by numerous species of fish in fresh water 
lakes and rivers, both in this country and in Europe, is infested by Trematode worms, 
which become encysted in the tissues of the animal. Distomum nodulosum has been 
