THE OYSTEE INDUSTRY. 513 



heap a rough stoue tool which exhibited signs of long use both as a hammer and as a wedge or 

 knife with which to pry open the valves. Any of their stone knives or smaller hatchets would 

 have been eminently suitable, but an implement in the possession of Dr. E. C. Chapman, of Dam- 

 ariscotta, Me., appears to have been made expressly for this service, and would accomplish the 

 matter as deftly as our modern knives. Stone tools, supposed to have been designed for this use, 

 are mentioned by C. C. Jones and others, among the antiquities of the southern sea-board. 



Civilized man, however, ever chary of using his naked fingers, centuries ago devised the 

 ingenious oyster-tongs, modifications of the general pattern of which are shown in accompanying 

 illustrations. In Virginia a truer tongs (since it is single-pointed) is used under the very proper 

 name of ''nippers," an illustration of which is also appended. 



In addition to these instruments, oysters are taken in some localities by a large, stout, very 

 long-handled rake, with teeth a foot long, sometimes only gently curved; in other patterns so much 

 bowed as to describe more than a half-circle in their curve. The concavity of the bending is, of 

 course, inward that is, toward the person using the instrument. Dredges also are used in gath- 

 ering oysters, with various kinds of hauling tackle and windlasses. 



Let us begin again at the northern limit of the oyster's range, and see how it has withstood 

 the attacks of civilized man. 



GULF OF SAINT LAWRENCE. The oysters of the Saint Lawrence were among those first 

 utilized by white men in America. Charlevoix mentions the practice of tonging through a hole in 

 the ice, and describes the familar instrument. Oysters once flourished all around Prince Edward 

 Island and skirting the mainland from Cape Breton to the Bay of Chaleur. Part of these beds 

 became extinct in prehistoric ages so long ago that in many cases they are overlaid by several 

 feet of silt. Many other beds have ceased to produce within historical times, apparently for no 

 other reason t"han that the natural process of growth has built up the deposit until it has come 

 too near the surface. In a large number of places, once well stocked, production of any import- 

 ance ceased through the inordinate and vicious methods of oysteriug, with other injurious prac- 

 i ices to help it on. There is room for an entertaining discussion upon the influences atfecting 

 the decline of these northern fisheries. 



CAUSES OF THE EXTINCTION OF OYSTERS NORTH OF CAPE COD. Turning to the Gulf of 

 Maine, an interesting inquiry arises in accounting for the extinction of the oyster-life which, as I 

 have shown above, once flourished extensively north of Cape Cod. What killed it? 



Beginning with those beds whose extinction seems to have been prehistoric, several theories 

 are at the service of the reader. One is, that the elevation, which the geologists tell us has been 

 proceeding steadily for many centuries, brought about conditions fatal to this sedentary mollusk 

 in certain localities. Another theory charges it to climatic changes, by which the temperature of 

 these waters has been seriously and rapidly lowered. It is the opinion of some students of the 

 physics of the ocean* that the Gulf Stream is gradually bending to a more southerly and easterly 

 course, wedged farther and farther from the North American coast by the inner Arctic current. If 

 this is so the increase of the chilled water pouring into the Gulf of Maine would account for the 

 fatal effects under examination, since the oyster and its co-extinct associates require compara- 

 tively warm waters, and, under the influence of the Gulf Stream, flourish at much higher latitudes 

 on the coast of Europe than here. 



Except perhaps at Damariscotta, where the space was so limited, I do not think the Indians 

 can be held responsible for the extermination of any of these oysters. 



'See a pamphlet by C. A. M. Taber, "How tbo great Prevailing Winds and Ocean Currents are Produced." 

 Boston. 1885. 



SEC. v, VOL. ii 33 



