In France the size of the marketable lobster is regulated by law, and fixed at twenty centimètres (eight inches) in length; all under that size are contraband. Every year the inhabitants of Blainville proceed to Chaussey to fish for lobsters. They are taken in baskets in the form of a truncated cone, the mouth of which is so arranged that the animal can enter, but cannot get out. The numbers caught by each fisherman and his family in a season may be estimated at a thousand or twelve hundred, which realise to the family thirteen or fourteen hundred francs, the season lasting about nine months.
Lobsters are collected all round our own coast for the London market. On the Scottish shore they are collected and kept in perforated chests floating on the water, until they can be taken away to market. From the Sutherland coast alone six to eight thousand lobsters are collected in a season. This process goes on all round the coast, and as far as Norway, whence an enormous supply of the finest lobsters are obtained, for which something like £20,000 per annum is paid, all these contributions being conveyed to the Thames and Mersey in welled vessels. But these old-fashioned systems are being rapidly superseded by the construction of artificial storing ponds, or basins. Of these ponds Mr. Richard Scovell has erected one at Hamble, near Southampton, in which he can store with ease fifty thousand lobsters, which will keep in good condition for six weeks. Mr. Scovell's tank is supplied from the coasts of France, Scotland, and Ireland, where fine lobsters abound. He employs three large and well-appointed smacks, each of which can carry from five thousand to ten thousand. On the coast of Ireland alone, it is said, ten thousand fine lobsters a week might be taken.
The Lobster (Homarus) is found in great abundance all round our coast; frequenting the more rocky shores and clear water, where it is of no great depth, about the time of depositing its eggs. Various are the modes in which they are taken; cone-shaped traps made of wicker-work, and baited with garbage, are perhaps the most successful. These are sunk among the rocks, and marked by buoys. Sometimes nets are sunk, baited by the same material. In other places a wooden instrument, which acts like a pair of tongs, is used for their capture.
Mr. Pennant, the naturalist, paid great attention to the lobsters, and their habits are well described in a letter from Mr. Travis, of Scarborough. "The larger ones," he says, "are in their best season from the middle of October to the beginning of May. Many of the smaller ones, and some few of the larger individuals, are good all the summer. If they are four and a half inches long from the top of the head to the end of the back shell, they are called sizeable lobsters; if under four inches, they are esteemed half size, and two of them are reckoned for one of size. Under four inches they are called pawks, and these are the best summer lobsters. The pincers of one of the lobster's large claws are furnished with knobs, while the other claw is always serrated. With the former it keeps firm hold of the stalks of submarine plants; with the latter it cuts and masticates its food very dexterously. The knobbed or thumb claw, as the fishermen call it, is sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right side, and it is more dangerous to be seized by the serrated claw than the other."
Fig. 338. Nephrops Norvegicus.
There is little doubt that the lobsters cast their shell annually, but the mode in which it is performed is not satisfactorily explained. It is supposed that the old shell is cast, and that the animal retires to some lurking-place till the new covering acquires consistence to contend with his armour-clad congeners. Others contend that the process is one of absorption, otherwise, if there were a period of moult, it would be shown by their shells. The most probable conjecture is that the shell sloughs off piecemeal, as it does in the cray-fish. The greatest mystery of all, perhaps, is the process by which the lobster withdraws the fleshy part of its claws from their calcareous covering. Fishermen say the lobster pines before casting its shell, so as to permit of its withdrawing its members from it.
The female lobster does not seem to cast her shell the same year in which she deposits her ova, or, as the fishermen say, "is in berry." When the ova first appear under the tail, they are small and very black, but before they are ready for deposition they are almost as large as ripe elderberries, and of a dark-brown colour. There does not seem to be any particular season for this act, as females are found in berry at all seasons, but more commonly in winter. In this state they are found to be much exhausted, and by no means fit for the table.
The generic name, Astacus of Fabricius, is now confined to the crawfishes, which have a depressed rostrum, one tooth on each side, and the last ring of the thorax movable. The lobsters (Homarus) have the eyes spherical, two rings of the thorax being soldered together. The Norway Lobsters (Nephrops Norvegicus, Fig. 338) have the eyes uniform, and the two last rings of the thorax movable.