. Contributions to Canadian biology. Marine biology; Natural history. 62 DEPARTMENT OF TEE NAVAL SERVICE 8 GEORGE V, A. 1918 occasion a female, which was known to carry a few eggs, was later found to be without any. In a third instance two females, both with eggs, were placed in a crate and a few days afterwards one of them was found to have lost her eggs. Here, then, we have records of three different occasions on which lobsters lost their eggs a short time after extruding them. If unfertilized eggs " go bad" and drop oS within a few weeks or even months after extrusion, it is easy
. Contributions to Canadian biology. Marine biology; Natural history. 62 DEPARTMENT OF TEE NAVAL SERVICE 8 GEORGE V, A. 1918 occasion a female, which was known to carry a few eggs, was later found to be without any. In a third instance two females, both with eggs, were placed in a crate and a few days afterwards one of them was found to have lost her eggs. Here, then, we have records of three different occasions on which lobsters lost their eggs a short time after extruding them. If unfertilized eggs " go bad" and drop oS within a few weeks or even months after extrusion, it is easy to understand how our fishermen find not more than an average of 20 per cent (according' to one member of the Shell Fish Commission of 1912-13) of the females carrying eggs. It may be, too, that mothers, when pressed by hunger, eat their eggs, whether fertilized or not fertilized. I have myself watched a female tearing off unfertilized eggs from her swimmerets, passing them forward and transferring them to her mouth with her maxillipedes. On examining her abdomen, the egg clusters could be seen ragged and torn on each side and partly removed. It could not be said in this instance that the eating of her eggs was the result of hunger, because all the lobsters in the pound this summer were well cared for and regularly fed. The fourth instance of the loss of eggs was the most remarkable of all. In this case none of the eggs adhered to the abdomen. The first intimation we had that eggs were being laid was seeing them floating around in the current on the floor of one of our rearing boxes. These were all soft and jelly-like, and undoubtedly, diseased and Fig. 4,—Mother lobsters canying newly extruded eggs. These are attached to the paired swimming feet on the imder surface of the abdomen. When carrying eggs, the mothers always bend the latter part of the abdomen and tail under the body so that the eggs are as well protected as if carried in a covered cup. In the illu
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