I08 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM, 



trees. If, on the contrary, the weather continues of a 

 warm and equable temperature both day and night, and if 

 it be at the same time calm, the young oysters will have a 

 chance of taking up their positions on the various substances 

 they love best. 



In calm and warm weather, and particularly in the 

 sunshine, I find the young oysters like to dance slowly up 

 and down, rising up and falling like sparks from a firework ; 

 the main body of them, however, remain at the bottom, 

 swarming about like bees round the entrance of a hive, or 

 a colony of wood ants when their nest is disturbed, (g) 



" How long the larval oysters remain in this locomotive 

 state, under natural conditions, is unknown, but they may 

 certainly retain their activity for a week, as I have kept 







them myself in a bottle of sea water, which was neither 

 changed nor aerated, for that period. But, sooner or later, 

 they settle down, fix themselves by one side to any solid 

 body, and rapidly take on the characters of minute oysters, 

 which have the appearance of flattened disks 2 r th of an 

 inch, more or less, in diameter ; they are therefore per- 

 fectly visible, as white dots, on the surface of the substance 

 to which they adhere. In this condition, the name of 

 ' spat ' is also applied to them. The locomotive larvae 

 being practically invisible in the sea, this spat appears to 

 be, as it were, precipitated out of the water ; and, since 

 great quantities appear at once, the oyster fishermen speak 

 of a ' fall' of spat." .... "The young oysters grow 

 very rapidly. In five or six months, they attain the size of 

 a threepenny piece ; and, by the time they are a twelve- 

 month old, they may reach an inch or more in diameter. 

 The rate of growth varies with the breed of oyster, and 

 with the conditions to which it is exposed ; but it is a 

 (g) Frank Bucldand. Times, August, 1865. 



