190 
BUIvLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
and after 330 days or more of successful fosterage deliver her young to the teeming 
and merciless sea. She shows this parental instinct not only by keeping to cover but 
by folding her tail in emergencies, so that the inquisitive cunner and insidious eel and 
other troublesome neighbors can not pick off her eggs or pull them out of her brood 
pocket. Further, by the incessant beating of the egg-laden swimmerets, the lodgment of 
destructive parasites is discouraged. The lobster also instinctively cleans her antennae 
by drawing their whips through the brushes of the great maxillipeds and applies the 
“broom,” the tips of the last pair of slender legs, to the swimmerets and underside of 
the tail when ready to deposit a new batch of eggs.“ Sexual union is largely, if not 
wholly, indiscriminate, and it is possible that the males “try” every lobster which they 
meet, or at least every female, whatever her condition (see p. 303). 
Lobsters about to molt, and possibly after the shell is cast, often conceal themselves 
in sand or seaweed, and the soft lobster will instinctively eat its own cast or swallow a 
miscellaneous mass of calcareous fragments, presumably for the purpose of obtaining an 
immediate and abundant supply of lime for the hardening of its new shell (see p. 185). 
Most important to the welfare of the lobster race no doubt is the instinct of fear 
upon which all their characteristic actions of burrowing, hiding, and what we have 
described as “stealth” and “caution” depend. Moreover, it is as important for the 
life of the young as of the adult, for this instinct manifests itself with comparative 
suddenness, as in birds, at the close of the larval swimming life, in the fourth-stage 
lobster, when, as if by magic, the lobsterling casts aside its larval habits, together with 
its characteristic larval organs, and appears in a new role, with new armor to suit the 
part which it is to play. It betrays fear and caution, and now goes to the bottom, digs 
burrows, and hides. The possession of the instinct of fear gives ground for the hope 
that the method of rearing the young to the fourth or fifth stage before liberation, 
which has met with complete success, may yet furnish a means of restocking our coastal 
waters, and of thus reviving the decayed lobster fisheries of the northern Atlantic States. 
The intelligence of the lobster is shown in its power of associating things with 
actions or of forming habits in the technical sense; in other words, in a power, however 
limited, of profiting by experience. Thus the lobster habitually returns to its burrow 
or place of hiding, which it recognizes and claims as its own, being ready to fight for its 
possession. There can be little doubt that it finds its way back by the same process that 
the fox returns to its hole or the bird to its nest, through the power of association, though 
not necessarily through the mediation of the same sense. 
But this rudimentary power of using experience as guide does not carry the lobster 
very far any more than it does many of the fishes and lower vertebrates generally. It 
does not enable it to escape from a trap or to avoid this engine of destruction in the 
future when once set free. 
a It may be noted further that Coste, who made some remarkable statements about the European lobster which are not 
confirmed by later observers, says that “In order to favor incubation the brood lobsters can expose at will their eggs to the 
light or keep them in shadow, according as they bend or straighten their tails; when assuming the latter attitude they will 
now bring their eggs to rest, or now wash them by gently moving the swimmerets.” (jj, p. 204.) 
