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cent. more than the present match, would come into general use.

One match superintendent, the father of a family, spoke feelingly to Dr. Andrews of the possibilities of the harmless match, and expressed great regret that it had been withdrawn. "There was a great satisfaction in working without a lot of poison around," he said, “and then it was worth a whole lot to know you were putting out a match with a head that a baby might suck and still not die." And that brings to me to another phase of the poisonous match peril-one that vitally affects every mother and father in the United States. While the writer was chatting to Dr. Andrews the mail carrier brought him a letter. He read it and handed it to me. "There are many like it in my desk," he said, sadly. Here it is:

"Dr. John B. Andrews, New York.

"Dear Sir:

It pleases me more than I can express myself to think someone in this world has taken an interest in this most awful match business. I and a good many others are ignorant of the fact that they are deadly poison, that is, I was until my little girl até them, and also was my husband and so many people that I have spoken to about them. I do hope and pray that something can be done to prohibit the using of this deadly poison phosphorus. It seems that they can make matches without and I do hope you can do something about it. One

other case just a few weeks before ours was a Dr. O'Connor's little girl, but I had not heard about it until after our case came up. Had I known I should have called a doctor at once. I was out calling on Saturday afternoon. She was left with her father and baby sister one year old, and of course was playing around the house, and spied the holder on the table that had the matches. She ate six or eight, so far as we can find out, but when she was taken sick to her stomach at night I did not think for one moment it was matches that had made her sick. I thought it was her supper and gave her something to settle her stomach. She seemed to be all right and slept the rest of the night and played as

lively as could be all Monday, and slept well Monday night, except towards morning, when she got real fussy, so I took her in bed with me, and it seemed so hard to warm her, she was so cold, and when I did succeed in getting her warm I put her in her little bed again.

She then slept till nine Tuesday a. m. I dressed her and sat her on the kitchen table while I fixed her breakfast, and when I turned to feed her she was asleep again, but I thought nothing of it. She kept it up all morning, falling asleep whenever I left her, so I was alarmed and sent for the doctor. She wanted to be on my lap all the time, so I held her. I told the doctor about her eating matches, but not because I thought it was they that made her sick, but I just happened to mention it. It was then I was told of the other little one dying from eating them, but it was too late to do anything for our little one, the poison had a deadly hold of her. She got unconscious and slept away. The doctor did all in his power to save her. Metta, who was only two years old, died at seven on Thursday a. m. We took her to Ann Arbor to bury her.

Yours truly,

Mrs. J. C. Morris,

579 Toledo Avenue, Detroit. P. S.--Matches were pink with white tip. Dr. O'Connor lives on Dix Avenue, Detroit, Mich."

So, you see, it isn't only the poorly paid wage earner who must be protected from the deadly white phosphorus match, for it is also a menace to every American home. Almost daily the newspapers record the death of some helpless babe who, like little Metta Morris, has been attracted by the colored tips of the matches and has died a terrible death as a result. The O'Connor child referred to in Mrs. Morris' pathetic letter was Margaret E. O'Connor, the twenty-three months' old daughter of Dr. and Mrs. M. W. O'Connor, of 615 Dix Avenue, Detroit, who died in great agony as a result of having eaten the blue and red heads of a number of matches last September. Dr. O'Connor called in Dr. W. A. Harper, a neighbor, and they worked for several hours trying to save the child's life. Margaret, while un

watched for a short time, went into a bedroom, where she climbed upon a bed and reached from a bookcase a tin box containing the matches.

Then there was John Henry Acker, a boy of four, who ate the heads of twenty Black Diamond matches at Monroe, Michigan, in January, 1910, and died two days afterwards; Edwin K. Woods, Jr., two years old, son of Dr. E. K. Woods, of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Raymond B. McGuire, eleven months old, of Depew, New York, who both met a similar fate in May, 1910, followed a week or so afterwards by Carl I. Stone, the two year old son of Frank Stone, 365 Hamblin Avenue, Battle Creek, Michigan, who died through eating the white. tips of twenty match heads. On June 2, 1910, Dorothy Hartle, the two year old daughter of Mrs. Samuel Hartle, died at Fort Wayne, Indiana, through eating the heads of more than forty matches. Other cases have since been reported from Birmingham, Alabama; Sidell, Illinois; Bronx, New York; Buffalo,

New York; Livonia, New York; Indianapolis, Indiana, and many other points.

While it is a decided shock to discover that our faithful friend the match is capable of causing such tragedies in our homes, it is comforting to realize that we have on hand a substitute that is in every way as efficient, and common sense as well as common humanity demands that we should insist on the banishment from our factories and homes of a poison which has already caused untold suffering through the efforts of a small body of men to save a few paltry dollars.

And all this applies with equal force to our Canadian friends, who have already gone us one better by putting forward a bill, which will undoubtedly pass the Parliament at Ottawa, absolutely to prohibit the manufacture and importation of matches made with white phosphorus. This bill had its first reading on November 24th, 1910, and the Act, by the terms of its framing, will come into force on the first day of January, 1912.

In Reverie

In the west, the weary Day

Folds its amber wings and dies;

Night, the long delaying Night,

Walks abroad in starry guise.

Rest more precious than a sleep,

Silence sweeter than a dream,

These enfold me as I float,

Idle waif on idle stream.

Fainter, fainter, fainter still,

By no breath of passion crossed,

With the tide I drift and glide

Out to sea-and all is lost.

-HARRIET MCEWEN KIMBALL,

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THE LOBSTER HATCHERY ESTABLISHED AT WICKFORD, RHODE ISLAND.

FRESH LOBSTERS FOR THREE CENTS

A

By

C. B. EDWARDS

FTER ten years of steady and continuous work on the part of the Commissioners of Inland Fisheries of the State of Rhode Island at their Experiment Station at Wickford, Rhode Island, a scheme has been devised and put in operation which promises not only to save the lobster from extinction but to revolutionize the methods employed in its artificial culture throughout world, and lobsters for three cents will be no surprising result. The work accomplished, too, at the Wickford Station, gives a firm foundation for the future raising of the lobster from the egg state to maturity on a commercially practicable scale by artificial methods.

the

This being the final goal of Superiutendent Earnest W. Barnes, who has been connected with the station for the past ten years, he regards the work done as simply a start in the right direction, although what has already been accomplished is without precedent in this or foreign countries, the efforts of biologists both abroad and in the domestic service of the United States Fish Commission failing to bring about anything like the

results accruing from the patient work of the Wickford authorities.

Owing to the alarming decrease in the lobster along the Atlantic Coast, the matter of artificial culture has received much impetus and the fact that the traffic in the lobster fisheries of Rhode Island is of considerable financial import to the state caused an immediate interest in the work of the Wickford Experiment Station. It is not generally realized that the lobster requires very delicate handling in the early stages of growth, a pine shaving in a retaining jar, the presence of wire netting over a bottle of larvae, may cause the death of hordes of the young crustacea. In the early stages of development the lobster is at the mercy of every current of water and makes easy prey for even the smallest of fishes. Probably their greatest enemy is in the cannibalistic tendency of the larvae, for all periods of life, but especially during the first three stages of life a lobster is eager to seize upon a weaker relative and devour him.

It is thus apparent that if much result is to be expected from the planting of lobster fry they must be reared to a

point of development which approaches in the nearest degree the property of self defense inherent in the adult crustacea. It is admitted that with the exception of the Wickford Hatchery the state and national lobster hatcheries fall far short of accomplishing the desired results. Indeed, in the latter mentioned hatcheries it is admitted that not over two per cent. ever live to reach the second larval stage. Furthermore, in the planting of first stage larvae in this helpless state they are poured in a cloud. of countless thousands into the water and the fish, attracted by the superabundance of food, proceed to avail themselves of the young lobsters. Authorities state. that it is extremely doubtful if one lobster out of every thousand liberated in this manner ever survives.

In the method employed at Wickford the egg lobsters are purchased in the spring and confined in covered cars, their claws being plugged to prevent fighting and the resultant scraping off of egg clusters which appear on the underside of the female adult. During the following May the lobsters that will hatch their eggs at approximately the same time are put in compartments together. As soon as the lobsters' eggs reach a point where they will hatch in two or three hours they are transferred to flat crates and allowed to float on this wooden structure in a large canvas bag or, as in the more recent method, the egg lobsters are placed in large wooden boxes which are subsequently used for rearing the larvae. The hatched larvae are allowed thus to roam around the bag or box under nearly natural conditions. When

FIRST STAGE LOBSTER.

FOURTH STAGE LOBSTER. Life size.

a sufficiently large number of eggs are hatched to fill the retaining bag with fry, the egg lobsters are removed to another bag. The main feature of successful lobster raising as practiced at Wickford is in keeping the hatched fry in constant circulation, thus protecting the fry from the fungous diseases which infest them and minimizing the danger of cannibalism. The circulation of water is accomplished by large, two-bladed, paddles, not unlike restaurant fans, which, by slow revolutions in a box or bag, keep the fry separated and at the same time fan the food within easy reach. The bags in which the lobsters are hatched are provided with screen windows, allowing the ingress of fresh water and the egress of the foul.

The most peculiar feature of the Wickford hatchery is the hatchery itself. It has no physical connection with the ground beneath it and is veritably built on water, for the hatchery looks like nothing so much as a large houseboat. Around it are grouped large raftlike structures supported by barrels. A main shaft running from the houseboat proper

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over the rafts or floats. This system of shafting, deriving its power from a gasoline engine sheltered in the houseboat, transmits through bevel gears, the power necessary to drive the circulation propellers in each of the hatching bags. To conform to the undulating movement of the floats, the shaft from the engine house is connected to the floats by a flexible joint and the shafting used on the floats is of such small diameter that the motion of the water bends it without tearing off shaft hangers or breaking the shafting. Two floats are used, one on each side of the houseboat, and from these are suspended twenty-eight rearing bags ten feet square and four feet deep.

The engine gives a speed of 360 revolutions and this is reduced by belting to forty and finally, through gearing, to twenty and ten, the last named being the revolutions per minute that the "fans" run during the culture of the lobsters. The paddles are painted white, as the young lobsters tend to avoid all white surfaces, and the white sides and bottoms of the hatching receptacles pro

tect the delicate larvae from injury by being thrown against the container or ventilating paddles. In the making of the ventilating paddles only by years of study was it possible to arrive at the proper angle for the blades of the paddles to impose against the water, it being found that an infinitesimal variation in this respect was the cause of total failures, resulting in the death of a large number of fry and poor larvae. The current given by the paddles must be just strong enough to keep the food in motion, prevent cannibalism by constant circulation, and keep the larvae. from collecting at the bottom of the bag and rolling over with the food silt and diatoms that have collected there. strength of current also affects molting, which is the process of growth in the crustacea, the growth being accomplished between the time of casting off the old shell and the hardening of the new coat.

The

The lobster fry eat ravenously in all stages and the feeding assumes great importance as the young lobsters molt three times in from ten to fourteen days. Under such conditions the feeding is

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