726 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



. The industry is profitable almost beyond con- 

 ception, and we are told on official authority that a crop of 

 oysters valued at eight million dollars was raised in this 

 way upon a French farm of 492 acres ; while upon another 

 French farm of 500 acres 16,000,000 oysters were taken in 

 six tides, although there were no oysters to be found there 

 when the farm was established, five years before. 



Ingersoll, in his " Report on the Oyster Industry of 

 the United States," says that twenty bushels of shells, laid 

 down anywhere in Barnegat bay, New Jersey, will produce 

 one hundred bushels of oysters, and a Connecticut writer 

 gives the following account of the result of three years of 

 oyster-farming under wise laws, in that State : 



" Fifty thousand acres of entirely barren ground, covered 

 thirty, forty, and fifty feet deep by the waters of Long 

 Island Sound, have been made into productive oyster beds, 

 and have multiplied by a hundred-fold the production of 

 native oysters. Ten years ago tens of thousands of bushels 

 of oysters were imported from New York, New Jersey, and 

 Rhode Island, and now hundreds of thousands of bushels 

 are yearly exported to these States and to Massachusetts. 

 Millions of dollars are now invested in the industry, thou- 

 sands of men and women are employed, millions of bushels 

 are in growing crops, and hundreds of thousands of dollars 

 yearly come into the States as proceeds of exported oysters. 

 The oyster authorities have paid more than fifty thousand 

 dollars in the towns and to the State for grounds to culti- 

 vate, and pay a yearly tax to a large amount." 



According to Ingersoll, 515,000 bushels of seed oysters 

 were in 1879 taken from trie Chesapeake bay, to be planted 

 in Connecticut, and three years of wise management have 

 produced such a change that one firm shipped to San 

 Francisco, in the spring of 1883, 15,000,000 young oysters, 



