ARTIFICIAL OYSTER CULTIVATION. I I 9! 



(8.) By laying different varieties of oysters, and of 

 different ages, in the same bed ; because, according to 

 Davaine, oysters produce only male sexual products 

 towards the end of the first year, and it is only later, 

 from the third year onwards, they become females and 

 produce ova. 



Step by step, in chapter after chapter, have I led the 

 reader to perceive, to understand, and appreciate the 

 wonder-working-powers of Nature, in the natural history 

 of the oyster. I have shown him how impossible it were 

 to narrate in the brief space of two or three chapters a 

 tenth part of what is known of the life and habits of this 

 " breedy creature." He has seen how every stage of its 

 growth has been made the stand-point for a wrangle of 

 some kind. He has listened to the disputes whether or 

 not oysters are male and female like other animals, and, 

 having heard both sides of the question, sits bewildered at 

 the fact that this singular animal is hermaphroditical, and 

 then (a few pages further on) his " confusion worse con- 

 founded," he finds that, with the exception of the Portu- 

 guese and American, this extraordinary fact relates only 

 to European oysters. He has seen it made a matter of 

 controversy on which of its shells it rests, the convex or 

 the flat one ; whether it emits a sound, whether it has 

 sight or hearing, whether it has any mode of progressing 

 from place to place, how long it is growing, when it 

 becomes reproductive, and other controversial particulars 

 needless to mention here. 



It is true that the glorious sunburst of Nineteenth- 

 Century-Science has dispersed the leaden-hued vapours of 

 ignorance, and curled back the mists of credulity from 

 about the temple of knowledge ; that the disputations 

 have apparently been settled ; that the keen eye of experi- 



