FISHES OF OUR NORTH ATLANTIC SEABOARD 
13 
CANNING LOBSTER MEAT 
The Lobster forms the principal means of livelihood in many New England communities and supports 
a fishery from Labrador to Delaware. The toothsomeness of the American variety was early recognized, 
and a regular fishery has existed on the Massachusetts coast for nearly a century. The fishing grounds 
are being depleted rapidly, the size and number of Lobsters caught are diminishing; hence the center of 
the fisherv has shifted northward, first to Maine and then to the Canadian provinces. 
fishes help them to solve their respective 
problems of hydrostatics admirably. Bot¬ 
tom fishes have small ones and species 
that range between the surface and the 
bottom have relatively large ones. The 
gas with which air bladders are filled 
is secreted from the blood in most species. 
FROM LUNG TO AIR BLADDER 
The evolution of the air bladder from 
a lung and the perfection of the gills to a 
point where they furnish oxygen enough, 
and therefore render lungs useless, may 
be traced in species still existing. In 
more primitive fishes the air bladder has 
a tube connecting it with the throat, and 
instead of being an empty, gas-filled, 
sealed sac, it is a true lung, made up of 
many lobes and parts and lined with a 
network of small blood vessels. The Gar 
Pike has a lunglike air bladder, and gulps 
air from the surface of the water. As 
the oxygen-assimilating gills develop in 
going up the scale of fish evolution, the 
air bladder becomes more a float and less 
a lung, until the latter use entirely dis¬ 
appears. 
The major fins of fishes correspond 
strikingly to the limbs of land mammals. 
Those back of the gills are known as the 
pectoral fins and correspond to the arms 
of humans. If the bones to which they 
are attached are examined critically, they 
will be found somewhat similar to the 
shoulder girdle of land mammals. 
Below the pectoral fins are the ventral 
fins, which correspond to the hind legs of 
quadrupeds. The dorsal fin on the back, 
the caudal fin at the root of the tail, and 
the anal fin beneath the body are used to 
maintain equilibrium or direction. 
nature’s breeding methods 
Nowhere is the art of camouflage 
more strikingly employed than in marine 
life. The master breeder of the ages. 
Nature, has provided certain, if very slow, 
methods of eliminating the unfit from 
reproduction. 
One method is by tests of brute 
strength, as in the battles of bull seals; 
another is by the elimination of the slug¬ 
gards, as in the pursuit of the Herring 
