138 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
I have never seen a blue lobster of perfectly uniform tint or without markings 
on the shell; yet lobsters which very nearly answer this description are occasionally 
taken, according to abundant testimony. Passing from this condition, there is a graded 
series of colors, from the decidedly blue to the distinctly blackish or bluish green. 
There is a well-preserved skeleton of a blue lobster in the museum of the 
Peabody Academy of Science at Salem, Massachusetts. 1 This specimen is a male, 
11? inches long, and has a hard shell. The carapace is deep indigo above, but lighter 
on the sides with rather faint spots of light blue. The “tail” is of a purplish cast, 
with fine spots or marbling of dark blue. The large claws are purplish above, with 
abundant darker blotches, while they are cream-colored below, with some fine blue 
spots. The other legs are cream-colored, washed or speckled with blue. 
Mr. J. W. Savage received at Boston, in June, 1893, about a hundred exceptionally 
blue lobsters from Nova Scotia. They had “hard shells,” and would average If pounds 
each in weight. As he expressed it, “they were as blue as bluejays.” In April of 
the same year Mr. A. P. Greenleaf, of Boothbay, Maine, received also from Nova 
Scotia, as he informed me, two thousand or more very blue lobsters. He says that 
the usual spots and other markings of the shell were not conspicuous, and that the 
colors were so bright that he was almost afraid to ship them to market. A female 
egg-bearing lobster from Nova Scotia, which I examined in September, was of a dull 
leaden blue color over the whole upper part of the body. The lateral edges of the 
carapace were sky-blue, the claws very dark, almost black, above, and dull red below. 
I have already referred to the bluing of lobsters (p. 135), which is due to either a 
physical or chemical change in the shell pigments and has no adaptational significance. 
Blue crayfishes described by Lereboullet { 119 ) were “of an azure or cobalt color 
more or less intense; the claws deeply colored; the legs paler, and the lower parts of 
the body of a pale red.” He thought that the shell contained three kinds of pigment — 
red, bine, and green, and that in the red and blue varieties one of these pigments was 
excessively developed. 
RED LOBSTERS. 
Occasionally red living lobsters are seen, which are very rarely as bright in 
color as those which have been boiled. Mr. F. W. Collins, of Rockland, Maine, had 
a lobster of this variety in September, 1890. It was taken in Dyers Bay, near Jones- 
port, Maine. It had a hard shell, and when in the floating car with other lobsters 
was very conspicuous for its bright color. 
Mr. S. M. Johnson informs me that lobsters of this interesting color variety are 
met with “more or less frequently.” Speaking of one which was obtained in 1892, he 
says that “although taken by itself the color was somewhat paler than the ordinary 
boiled lobster, yet if put with others that had been boiled it would have been hard to 
distinguish the difference.” 
Through the kindness of Messrs. Johnson and Young I received on April 9, 1894, 
a remarkably perfect specimen of a red lobster, of which I have made a drawing 
colored as accurately as possible from life (plate 16, tig. 21). It was alive and active 
when it reached Cleveland, had a fairly hard shell, was without external eggs, and 
measured Ilf- inches. Except in color, it was perfectly normal. It was caught in the 
vicinity of Mount Desert, Maine. The ovaries, which were immature, were of a light- 
1 I had the privilege of examining this and other specimens in the museum through the courtesy 
of Mr. John Robinson, treasurer of "the Peabody Academy of Science. 
