the oysters of any bed be of absolutely uni- As the work of gathering for market slackens in May, the oysterman begins to "comb" the beds that contain his growing stock, by means of coarse-meshed dredges. In this operation the oysters which have settled into the mud during the winter are lifted out, scoured of slime, and loosely scattered upon the surface. At the same time the larger clusters are removed and broken up for transplanting to thinner beds; the predatory star-fish and whelks are caught and killed, and the ground is left in condition to receive kindly the young spat which will soon swarm in the water. rested an abundance of spat where the unmixed stools have failed. It is not enough that these needed lodging-places be scattered over the bottom in readiness for the home-seeking spat; they must be in proper condition to welcome their expected tenant,—that is, entirely free from slime. And as this slime quickly covers every object under water it is clear that hap-hazard work at such a time will not answer. Besides, the precise moment of spawning is determined not by the almanac, but by the general character of the season, the position and nature of the ground, the depth of the water, and so on, and may be any time between the first of July and the last of August. Again it sometimes happens that the spawning process is aborted; the ova fail to be developed; in which case the most inviting of stools would be offered in vain. Thus it requires no small degree of special intelligence and practical skill to determine when the proper moment for stool-planting occurs; for the lack of which many have thrown away their stools and their labor, and jumped to the conclusion that oyster breeding is more a matter of luck than of science. The infant oysters begin to be plainly visible in about a fortnight after they strike; under specially favorable conditions they have been discernible in eight days. For the first three or four months their growth is slow, after that they increase in size very rapidly. The propagating beds receive a very different treatment. On these there will be a few old oysters left for seed, or selected oysters will be placed there as a brood-stock; and as spawning time approaches the oyster farmer will make ready the "stools which are to afford resting-places for the coming crop. In assorting the oysters sold the previous season he has accumulated a considerable pile of refuse shells, dead starfish, whelks, gravel, etc., which by sunshine and shower has been freed from mud and animal matter, and otherwise fitted for the reception of spat. If the promise of an abundant spawning is good he will supplement this pile of stools with some hundreds, perhaps thousands of bushels of clean shells of oysters, clams, scallops, and the like, and many sloop-loads of gravel. The depositing of these stools begins as soon as the oysters show signs of spawning. Usually four or five hundred bushels of shells, or from five to six tons of gravel, coarse and fine, are required for each acre of breeding-ground, the shells and gravel being cast upon the water by the shovelful as the boat drifts with the tide. A marked advantage is gained by using stools of unequal sizes; apparently not so much for the greater range of choice presented to the young spat, as for the mechanical action of the unequal stuff upon the bottom currents. The floating spat doubtless take refuge in It takes but a moment to cast off the ironthe little eddies created by the irregular bot-jawed bag of netting; in another minute or tom, and remain until ready to strike, when otherwise they might be swept away and At any rate, it has been repeatedly observed that the mixed stools have ar Would you like to see how an oyster farm looks? You may be sure of a pleasant sail, this fair October day, at any rate; for our host, the pioneer in successful oyster farming, has placed a tidy smack at our disposal, and will see to it that the pursuit of knowledge does not spoil companionship or lessen the enjoyment of sea and sky. Last summer a broad tract lying between the islands and yonder wooded shore was stocked with breeding oysters and duly planted with shells and gravel; a half-hour's run down the harbor will bring us to it. It is a pretty bit of water, backed by low hills, bright with autumnal colors. Only a few protruding poles give indication of the wealth that lies below the surface; let us see what report the dredge will give. two the boat comes about and the catch is hauled in and emptied upon the deck. Mere rubbish, you are disposed to call the dirty mess of empty shells and gravel, with only two or three fair-sized oysters to keep company with a ragged, sprawling spider-crab and a couple of star-fish. But look closer. Here is half an oyster-shell specked with little brown things scarcely larger than pinheads. They are young oysters. Count them! Seventy-nine! Take another shell at random; you count a hundred such spots, and there are more on the other side. Those golden spots are not oysters, but young "gingles ": the majority are-oysters enough to fill a bushel-basket when fully grown. This pebble, no larger than a hickory-nut, carries a score or more; and similarly every particle of this seeming rubbish is loaded with promises of future profit and enjoyment. If no more than one in ten survives, the crop will be a good one. Drop the dredge anywhere on this well-stocked ground and the same favorable report will be returned. A promising patch, the owner calls it; and, removed for making up deficiencies on other grounds; by the same operation the loose "seed" will be lifted out of the mud and the ground prepared for another falling of spat. The second year the combing and thinning will be repeated lest the crop become too crowded; and if all goes well, a further thinning out will be required the year after, by which time the oysters of this year's birth will be ready for transference to the fattening-grounds, where another year's development will fit them for market as fancy Saddle Rocks. In the meantime the seed (last year's oysters), now being transplanted, will have undergone the same course of treatment. There is no danger of over-combing, for the seed which slips through the meshes of the dredge will be all the ground can carry, and the more the bottom is disturbed in this way the surer the new crop. The surplus seed removed in the process of comb THE OYSTER'S ENEMIES AT WORK-(STAR-FISH, WHELKS AND DRILLS). price, many oyster growers particularly those of Long Island who have not learned to raise their own seed, have resolved to plant no more oysters until the price of seed is reduced; a wise enough resolution, provided they adopt the one legitimate and certain means for cheapening seed, namely, artificial propagation. Thus far, unfortunately, they have not taken kindly to this good work. Heretofore they and their fathers have been satisfied with the unaided efforts of nature, trusting to chance-sown beds of seed for the replenishing of their grounds. When oystermen were few, the areas under cultivation small, and the demand for oysters comparatively limited, such happy-go-lucky methods may have answered very well. But times have changed, and men must yield to the logic of events or retire from the contest. The winners in this, as in every other competition involving natural processes, must inevitably be those who leave nothing to accident, who know the conditions under which nature succeeds and skillfully supply such conditions. To test the relative beneficence of aided and unaided nature, let us cast the dredge one has ever been allowed to cultivate it. time to catch a few spat. But the rest of the shells and all this gravel must have been too foul to receive the spat, and consequently the prospect is not encouraging for those who may wish, four years hence, to reap the benefits of this common ground. Nature is a careless mother at best; and of the countless millions of embryo oysters that swarmed in these waters last summer, very few were able to find a suitable resting-place. Nature betrayed them at the critical moment, and now they are not. Had these grounds been subject to individual ownership and personal care, they would not have been allowed to remain in barrenness. Whether the general public would have lost or gained by a surrender of its profitless right to those who would have made a thousand oysters grow where scarcely one now appears may be left to the reader's judgment to decide. As we pass another line of stakes marking the boundary of private property the dredge is cast again. Lay your hand on the rope: the water is three fathoms deep, yet you can feel the multitude of oysters rolling in between the dredge's iron jaws. Haul in! A cable's length away, a bottom quite as good as this would have yielded nothing of value. Here the dredge comes up loaded with oysters, the most of them ranging in size from a silver quarter to a half-dollar piece. They are now in their second year, a few in clusters of two or three, but the majority single, and all showing the rounded outline which delights the oyster-lover. OYSTER ON THE BACK OF LIVE SPIDER-CRAB. Here and there in the pile is a gaping shell, some with one valve shorter than the other, some with a pin-hole through the purple spot where the muscle was attached. The former have been killed by star-fish, the latter by drills, innocent-looking creatures both of them, but dreadfully destructive to oysters. Fortunately, the drills confine their attacks to the young broods when thinning out is not so injurious. The stars kill at all ages. Sometimes they come up from deep water in swarms as countless as Colorado grasshoppers, and ravage an oyster plantation as relentlessly as the latter do the wheat fields of the border. Yonder sharpie is engaged in replanting a large tract which the stars invaded last spring, when the only oysters saved were those that were hastily removed in advance of the destroying host. By such attacks a man may lose his entire fortune before his danger is suspected, and at all times it is only by constant watchfulness and persistent dredging that these pests are kept within tolerable limits. In course of time, when the number of oyster farmers is largely increased, it may be possible by united effort and the maintenance of a special police working steamdredges to keep the stars under control, if not to exterminate them from these waters; but for many years they are likely to remain the chief source of annoyance and loss to this important branch of industry. Now and then a boring whelk or a winkle will kill an old oyster, or a boring sponge riddle a shell and divert its owner's strength to the work of maintaining the integrity of its pearly coat; now and then a violent storm will bury an oyster-bed under a smothering mass of weeds or mud; or, if in shallow water, will roll the crop ashore, or crush it to death with drifted ice; but these are occasional and minor evils, compared with the ceaseless depredations of the stars. While our host has been recounting the troubles and risks of oyster farming, his tidy craft has carried us to another ground from which the dredge brings up an attractive lot of round oysters, from two to four years old. Vast quantities of oysters of this size are annually opened at Fair Haven and the meats forwarded in tubs and barrels to the interior cities of New England for immediate use. And of late years a considerable demand has arisen for such oysters to be served on the half-shell as appetizers before a meala foreign fashion, which if kept within bounds is not a bad one, for young oysters thus served are unspeakably dainty and delicious. The general use of such immature oysters, however, is not to be commended, since it has nearly ruined the French oyster growers and largely helped to destroy the valuable natural beds along the Scotch and English coasts. The oyster rarely spawns before the fourth year, and if the beds are stripped at an earlier age, as has been largely the case in Europe, the fall of spat necessarily fails. As a recent English writer has said, speaking of the oyster breeders of Arcachon, Marennes, the Isle de Ré and other places, they "have killed the goose for the sake of its golden egg, and now we are beginning to be told that artificial oyster culture is not paying in France, and that the spat has failed! The excuse is amusing: how can they have spat if there be no oysters left to exude it ?" Even if there were no serious risk of ultimate barrenness from the general destruction of immature oysters, it would seem wasteful if not wicked to kill them at this stage (further than may be necessary for the thinning out of areas under cultivation), since they are now past the more serious cares and dangers of oyster farming, and in a year or two more will have doubled in size and greatly improved in quality. Yonder is an oyster-sloop nearly loaded with marketable oysters; let us run alongside and look at them. How bright and clean they rise from this gravelly bottom, swept almost constantly by a tide that runs like a mill-race. There can be no better fattening-ground. Observe this handsome four-year-old, a typical Saddle Rock, nearly as broad as long, and half as thick as it is broad. It was well formed when transplanted a year ago, but thin. You can see the lines of the old shell, and how great the increase in thickness has been. With scarcely any change in area, the bulk of its meat has nearly doubled. This six-year-old is another beauty, so regular in form, so healthy in appearance; and the rest are not unlike it. It is now at its best. It might live a dozen years longer without much enlargement save in the thickness of its shell. Notice the changes that have been wrought in these less regular forms, in the effort to attain the typical oval form. When transplanted they were thin and crooked; during the past year they have added nothing to their length, but very much to their breadth and thickness. Here is one that had been left too long on a muddy bottom and had developed into a regular "Shanghai." In transplanting, fully an inch of one valve was broken off at the end, and a new beginning was made at the broken edge. Very curious are the alterations often made in ill-formed shells in consequence of removal to a different bottom, all showing the susceptibility of the oyster to changes in the external conditions of its life. A most remarkable illustration of the oyster's ability to withstand rough usage was shown in a specimen, set aside for representation here, but lost (probably stolen) before it reach REPAIRED SHELLS. ed the artist's hands. The shell had been caught somehow by an oysterman's tongs or dredge, unhinged, and the valves turned at right angles to their normal position. In spite of this terrible wrench, the animal not only survived but constructed a new hinge, walled in the exposed angles, and re-arranged its internal economy to conform to its new condition. When taken, it was alive and hearty, its eccentric shape alone drawing attention to its strange experience. The changes wrought by cultivation in the oyster's outside appearance are not more remarkable than the improvement of its meat. The body grows deep and large and solid; the mantle, naturally thin and skinny, thickens to the very edge with firm white flesh; and the quality of the meat surpasses that of the uncultivated oyster as signally as high-bred, stall-fed beef does the product of Texan pastures. As they come from the fattening-grounds, the oysters are naturally charged with bitter sea water, more or less muddy, and the large stomach is filled with undigested food. To fit them for the table, they must be "floated"-that is exposed for a tide to sweeter water. The oyster grower's land station is usually at the mouth of a river, and when the oysters are brought in they are allowed to rest for a day or so in large shallow floats open to the current. Here |