132 



THE OYSTER. 



There are many bottoms where there are no natural 

 oysters, simply because there is nothing upon the 

 ground for the spat to catch upon, or because they 

 are not places to which spat is carried ; and there are 

 other bottoms which are so soft that a very young and 

 small oyster would be buried in the mud and killed, 

 although larger ones are able to live and thrive in the 

 mud. In all these places oyster-planting may be car- 

 ried on with profit, for while it is true that the total 

 number of oysters which are born is not increased by 

 planting, the number which reach maturity is greatly 

 increased ; for the young oysters fasten themselves so 

 close together and in such great numbers that the 

 growth of one involves, under natural conditions, the 

 crowding out and destruction of hundreds of others, 

 which might have been saved by scattering them over 

 unoccupied ground. 



Planting also adds very greatly to the value of oys- 

 ters, as they grow more rapidly and are of better 

 quality when thus scattered than they are upon the 

 natural beds, and Ingersoll, in his " Report on the Oys- 

 ter Industry of the United States," quotes the state- 

 ment of Captain Cox, of New Jersey, that thirteen 

 dollars' worth of small ' seed ' oysters yielded, after 

 they had been planted for two years, oysters which 

 were sold for $m, besides about thirty bushels which 

 were used as food by the planter's family. 



Oyster-planting can be carried on only on private 

 grounds, and it cannot flourish in a communitv which 



