720 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



Having no convenient scape-goat on which to vent 

 their spleen, the oyster question remains in statu quo, and 

 the only wonder is that these would-be-reformers do not 

 imitate the pious oystermen of Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, 

 who, after they had exterminated their oysters by over- fishing, 

 laid their loss upon Providence, which had, they said, 

 punished them for their sins by inflicting a fatal disease 

 upon the innocent oysters. 



The contrast between the views upon the oyster ques- 

 tion which are dawning upon the British public, and those 

 which come from a broad-minded consideration of the 

 question in all its relations, cannot be better illustrated 

 than by the examples of France (already given), and that 

 conveyed in the following extracts selected from Dr. 

 Brooks' Report, in the numerical order of its chapters, as 

 consecutively as is possible with, and necessary in, the 

 limited space at my command. And, finally, as " The 

 Maryland Report" is now very rare, and has been with- 

 drawn from sale, I will begin by giving the reader a view 

 of its object, in the following address : 



To the Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University. 



In accordance with your request, a small edition has 

 been printed, for the use of the University, of a Report of 

 the Oyster Commission of the State of Maryland, which 

 has just been presented to the Legislature of this State. 

 Its author is one of our own staff, Professor W. K. Brooks, 

 Ph. D., who has devoted the greater part of his time during 

 the last eighteen months to the study of the problem of 

 perpetuating the oyster beds of the Chesapeake. The fact 

 that he was made a member of the Oyster Commission, by 

 appointment of the Governor of the State, should not con- 

 ceal the part which this University has taken in the prose- 



