516 HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 



planted for a few months, entirely loses its verdant tint. Seekonk oysters, therefore, never go to 

 market, though their color, due to the same harmless coloring matter as that which tints the leaves 

 of trees, and which is absorbed from the food, has little effect upon the taste, and none upon the 

 wholesomeness of the mollusk. 



LONG ISLAND SOUND. Passing to Long Island Sound, the decline of the native fisheries for 

 direct marketing is quite as marked as in Rhode Island. In the early days the cup-shaped, rather 

 small, flinty-shelled oysters of the Pequonock River, and the plentiful rock oysters of the Thames 

 were highly esteemed in local markets. In Norwich, especially, a large business was carried on 

 with "natives" until quite recently, but this has almost wholly ceased. Breeds at Saybrook, 

 Clinton, and Guilford, once highly productive, are no longer so in the last-named case manifestly 

 through over-raking, in defiance of law. Native oysters of large size, but with a tendency to 

 grow ir. bunches, were always to be had scattered among the Thimble Islands, but at Branford, 

 where primitively the river was one great oyster bed, the supply is now wholly exhausted. The 

 whole shore of Connecticut, east of New Haven, does not now yield more than 1,000 or 1,500 

 bushels of uncultivated oysters fit for market. 



The western half of the State, however, has always been more productive, and in coming to 

 New Haven Harbor with the Quinnipiac and its other tributaries, we find the first of several large 

 fields of natural production, the history of which shows the influence of civilization in a very 

 marked manner. For many years the upper part of New Haven Harbor has been the scene of 

 oyster operations. Shell-heaps along the banks of the Quinuipiac show how the aborigines sought 

 in its waters, season after season, the best of bivalves, and the earliest settlers followed their 

 example. Natural beds of oysters were scattered over the bottom of the whole river for 3 miles, 

 and at intervals along the eastern shore of the harbor. The result was that the raking of oysters 

 in this river, and along the eastern shore of the harbor at its mouth, which was a free privilege, 

 was early adopted as a business by many persons who lived near the banks, and a considerable 

 retail peddling trade was thus kept up throughout the neighborhood, in addition to the home- 

 supply. Wagon-loads of opened oysters in kegs traveled in winter to the interior towns, even as 

 far as Albany, and thence westward by canal. 



In colonial times not only, but up to the last quarter-century, and therefore long subsequent 

 to the beginning of oyster culture there, wild, uncultivated stock formed an important part of the 

 marketable oysters at New Haven; and the persistence of these "natural beds" here and else- 

 where to the southward (as well as in Buzzard's and Narragansett Bays), have formed a fruitful 

 source of embarrassment between the cultivators and the outside public, and the occasion of endless 

 legal tinkering in trying to compromise between new interests and alleged rights and privileges de- 

 rived from antique laws, a long usage, or, strongest of all, originating in ignorant conservatism. 



It was admitted very long ago that some rest was required by even so bountiful grounds as 

 lay under the Quinnipiac, and a law prohibiting fishing in midsummer has been generally regarded 

 for a wnturv or more, yet gradually the oysters became more rare and coveted. The same history 

 is substantially true of all the harbors on the north shore of Long Island Sound. 



TIIE EAST UIVER. At Nonvalk the sound narrows rapidly into the East River, and thence 

 a I tin- way !<> Xew York oysters once grew in the greatest profusion on both shores, and in many 

 pi, ices i.i the channel, wherever it was possible for a bed to maintain itself. Most of those locali- 

 ties in ^hallow water known and raked by the early colonists have long been abandoned or 

 dest roved; but new places were continually originating or being discovered, so that until the 

 beginning of the present century the supply gathered full-grown from their native waters was 

 quite equal to the demand. The principal points for market-catching were Norwalk, Stamford, 



