THE OYSTER. 



213 



mands the employment of improved methods and 

 cheap and effective labor-saving appliances. 



What is needed is more oysters : not the prohibition 

 of effective methods of catching them. 



No animal upon earth, large enough to be valuable 

 as human food, can long survive the attacks of an 

 enemy who brings against it the resources, the de- 

 structive weapons and the intelligence of civilized man. 

 Fortunately, the resources which render man the most 

 irresistible of enemies, also enable him to become a 

 producer as well as a destroyer ; and while the fear of 

 him and the dread of him is upon every beast of the 

 earth and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that 

 moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the 

 sea, while they are all delivered into his hands and are 

 powerless to resist him, he alone, of all animals, is able 

 to make good his ravages, by agriculture and by 

 domestication, by the selection and improvement of 

 animals and plants, and by artificial propagation. 



In the year 1880 the fisheries census, and special 

 investigations under the direction of the U. S. Fish 

 Commission, proved that there had been a most rapid 

 and alarming decline in the value of the shad fisheries 

 in the rivers and bays and sounds of our Atlantic 

 coast, and that there was every reason to fear that in 

 a few years the shad would cease to be of any value as 

 a food supply. 



The adult shad are oceanic fishes, but each spring 

 they enter our inlets and bays and make their way 



