THE OYSTER. 5 



and it will be obtained without depleting or exhaust- 

 ing the beds, and without exposing the laborers to 

 harships or unusual risk. 



This is not the baseless speculation of an idle fancy. 

 Our opportunities for rearing oysters are unparalleled 

 in any other part of the world. In another place I 

 have shown that, in other countries, much less valuable 

 grounds have, by cultivation, been made to yield oysters 

 at a rate per acre which, on our own great beds, would 

 carry our annual harvest very far beyond the sum 

 of all the oysters which have ever been used by the 

 packers of Maryland and Virginia. 



This is capable of proof by the evidence of other 

 countries, but I wish to show now that it is proved 

 with equal conclusiveness by the natural history of the 

 oyster. 



j 



The Chesapeake Bay is one of the richest agricul- 

 tural regions of the earth, and its fertility can be com- 

 pared only with that of the valleys of the Nile and the 

 Ganges and other great rivers. It owes its fertility to 

 the very same causes as those which have enabled the 

 Nile valley to support a dense human population for 

 untold ages without any loss of fertility ; but it is 

 adapted for producing only one crop, the oyster. 



All human food is vegetable in its origin, and 

 whether we eat plants and their products directly, or 

 use beef, mutton, pork, fowls or eggs as food, it all 

 carries us back to the vegetable kingdom ; for if there 

 were no plants, all animals would starve at once. 

 Everv one knows that this is absolutely true of all ter- 



