FISHES OF OUR NORTH ATLANTIC SEABOARD 
19 
Like dogs, Lobsters have frequently 
been observed to drag dead prey to some 
secret spot, bury it, and then mount guard 
over the cache, ready to defend it against 
all comers. And often many grim battles 
are fought over such caches. Indeed, few 
of the giant Lobsters that have been taken 
are without numerous scars that tell in no 
uncertain language of pitiless struggles to 
which they have been party, where quar¬ 
ter was neither asked nor given. 
In the American Museum of Natural 
History in New York a giant Lobster is 
preserved whose living weight was 34 
pounds. It was captured at Atlantic 
Highlands in 1897. The Smithsonian 
Institution has one whose living weight 
is estimated at 25 pounds. 
Dr. F. H. Herrick, the author of the 
United States Bureau of Fisheries’ strik¬ 
ing study of the American Lobster, thinks 
that all of the thirteen titans he lists as 
weighing more than 20 pounds were not 
giants by nature, but rather simple favor¬ 
ites of fate, which allowed them to live to 
a riper age than their smaller fellow- 
creatures. Good luck never deserted 
them until they became stranded on some 
inhospitable beach or entangled in some 
fisherman’s gear. Such Lobsters as these, 
he believes, have weathered the perils of 
at least half a century. 
THE MOLTS OF THE LOBSTER 
Few living creatures have such striking 
habits of changing their clothes as the 
Lobster. It begins to molt or discard its 
outgrown clothes the second day after 
hatching, and continues to do so with de¬ 
creasing frequency until it has ceased to 
grow at all. 
Nowhere else in Nature is the molting 
process so striking, so critical, or so 
abrupt. 
When the old shell becomes too small 
a new skin begins to grow underneath it. 
When this growth nears completion the 
Lobster becomes a “shedder,” ready to 
cast off not only its old shell, but even the 
lining of its esophagus, stomach, and in¬ 
testine. 
Specimens under careful observation 
have been found to be restless and un¬ 
easy as the time of the molt approaches. 
Suddenly there comes a break where the 
tail joins the shell. The Lobster then 
turns over on its side, bends itself in the 
shape of a “V,” with the break at the 
apex. Pressure is applied, and gradually 
the rear end of the shell breaks loose 
from the new one beneath. 
“wire pulling” a claw 
Step by step the process of liberating 
the imprisoned body from its outgrown 
armor sweeps forward until finally the 
claws are withdrawn through the narrow 
openings. Presently, with a mighty ef¬ 
fort, the Lobster emerges from its old 
coat of mail, casts off the linings of its 
digestive tract, and steps out, full-pano¬ 
plied in a soft new shell. 
The area of a cross section of the flesh 
in the largest part of one of its big claws 
is four times greater than that of a cross 
section of the second joint, through 
which it must be drawn. The process, 
therefore, reminds one of pulling wire 
through the holes of a drawplate. 
From six weeks to three months are 
required for the soft-shelled Lobster to 
become a hard-shelled one again. 
The Lobster has many enemies, but, 
next to man and his alluring traps, the 
Codfish ranks as its worst foe. With an 
appetite that doesn’t stop at a hard shell 
up to eight inches, and with a particular 
taste for young Lobsters from two to 
four inches in size, the Codfish is a tre¬ 
mendous competitor of the Lobster palace. 
During their younger lives. Lobsters 
play into the hands of millions of foes in 
the sea, for it is not until the fourth or 
fifth stage that they leave the surface for 
the bottom. It is not until this period 
that caution seems to dawn in them and 
guide them to hiding places on the sea 
floor. In this care-free period vast schools 
of surface-feeding fish strain the water 
through which they chance to pass as 
effectively as might a towed net. 
MESSMATES PRESENT THEMSELVES 
Though only a few parasites of the 
Lobster are known, it has many mess¬ 
mates. Barnacles affix themselves to its 
shell and cement their tentlike coverings 
thereon; various kinds of Mussels insin¬ 
uate themselves into attractive depres¬ 
sions in the carapace and joints. Tuni- 
cata sometimes fasten themselves on the 
undersurface of the body, between the 
legs. Tube-forming Annelida, lacelike 
Bryozoa, and various forms of algae make 
