THE OYSTER. m 



Where scallop shells, as in Narragansett Bay, or, as in 

 northern New Jersey mussels and jingles, Anemia, can 

 be procured in sufficient quantities, they are undoubt- 

 edly better than anything else, because they not only 

 break easily in culling, but are so fragile that the strain 

 of the growth of two or more oysters attached to a 

 single scallop or muscle-valve will often crack it in 

 pieces, and so permit the several members of the bunch 

 to separate and grow into good shape singly. I am 

 not aware that any of the elaborate arrangements made 

 in France and England for catching and preserving 



the spat have ever been imitated here, to any practical 



i 



extent. The time will come, no doubt, when we shall 

 be glad to profit by this foreign example and ex- 

 perience. 



" Although the effort to propagate oysters by catch- 

 ing drifting spawn upon prepared beds has been tried 

 nearly everywhere from Sandy Hook to Providence, 

 it has only, in the minority of cases, perhaps I might 

 say a small minority of cases, proved a profitable un- 

 dertaking to those engaging in it ; and many planters 

 have abandoned the process, or at least calculated but 

 little upon any prepared beds, in estimating the prob- 

 able income of the prospective season. This arises 

 from one of two causes: ist, the failure of spawn to 

 attach itself to the cultch ; or, 2d, in case a ' set ' occurs, 

 a subsequent death or destruction. 



The supposition among oystermen generally has 

 been that the water everywhere upon the coast was 

 filled, more or less, with drifting oyster-spat during 



