780 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



about $40 an acre, or about $4000 for 100 acres. To this 

 must be added about $2 an acre for ground surveys, buoys, 

 anchors, &c. But now that he has got his set everywhere 

 upon this 50 acres of shells, the planter's anxieties have 

 just begun. 



" . The cultivator finds his work as risky as 



mining. ' You can't see into the water,' he says ; and the 

 miner quotes back his proverb, ' You can't see into the 

 ground.' A sufficient cause may usually be assigned for 

 the death of large districts of infant oysters, which ap- 

 peared to get a good start. Starvation is probably the 

 true explanation. Some evil current bore away from them 

 the necessary food. In other cases specific causes, the 

 most potent of which are storms, can be pointed out. 



" Vicissitudes and Losses of Oyster Planting. In the fall, 

 just when the young oyster-beds are in their most' delicate 

 condition, occur the most destructive gales that afflict the 

 Connecticut coast. They blow from the south-west, and 

 if, as occasionally happens, they follow a stiff south-easter, 

 they produce a cross-sea of the worst character. The water 

 is thrown into a turmoil to a depth, in some cases, of four 

 or five fathoms, and everywhere between that and the 

 beach the oyster-beds are torn to pieces, all boundaries 

 are dissolved, and windrows of oysters, containing thou- 

 sands of bushels, are cast up along the whole extent of the 

 beach. Although so great a disaster as this is rare, it does 

 occasionally happen, and hardly a winter passes without 

 more or less shifting of beds, or other damage by tempest. 

 The burying of beds under drifted sand is more uncommon 

 off New Haven than easterly ; but in the harbour, where 

 the bottom is soft, mud is often carried upon the beds to 

 such an extent as to smother, if not wholly to hide, the 

 oyster. All that part of the harbour near the mouth of 



