ARTIFICIAL OYSTER CULTURE. Io6l 



Schleswig-Holstein beds, will soon become fatter, that is, 

 their generative organs will become larger because more 

 eggs or spermatozoa are produced than with poorer oysters. 

 . . . Thus it is with oysters as with all other animals : 

 their increase in size and numbers depends upon the quan- 

 tity of food which they get and consume. ... I do 

 not consider it practicable to fatten oysters by artificial 

 means, although in North America and Europe an effort 

 should be made to fatten planted oysters upon corn-meal. 

 The food of oysters consists of very small organic particles 

 which float in the water, and if one should attempt arti- 

 ficial feeding by carrying to the oysters of a bed water 

 containing pulpy pulverized flesh, bone-meal, fish-guano, 

 or corn-meal, it would be necessary to prevent the water 

 from flowing off from the bed until all the organic matter 

 had been eaten. But by so doing a large quantity of foul 

 gas would certainly be generated upon the bed and remain 

 there, so that the oysters, instead of fattening, would 

 become sick and die. Among the external life conditions 

 of a bioconose, temperature plays an important part. 



. A large number of the most productive 

 oyster-beds upon the west coast of Europe have been 

 devastated by overfishing, and many fresh waters have, 

 through the incessant catching of half-grown fish, been 

 almost entirely depopulated. It is very natural that those 

 years during which a large number of herring, salmon, or 

 sturgeon are caught upon a certain stretch of territory, 

 should be followed by years when fewer fish appear, 

 because in the years when large catches are made very 

 many breeding individuals are destroyed. 



People have experienced a thousand times 

 that the best flavoured and most agreeable animals and 

 plants are brought to perfection only under entirely definite 



