416 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



quality between the wliite and green fleshed sorts was imperceptible to 

 the taste. In conversation with a restaurateur quite recently, the latter 

 volunteered the information that he was in the habit of selecting tbe 

 green-fleshed oysters for his own eating, declaring that they were per- 

 ceptibly superior, in his estimation, to the white ones. This is the only 

 instance that has come to my knowledge where the preference was given 

 to the green oyster, as appears to be the case in England and on the 

 Continent. 



Without having made any special effort to collect data regarding the 

 occurrence of greeli oysters on the coast of the United States, I may say 

 that they are probably quite as common here as in Europe, and that 

 the cause is the same; at any rate it is certain that many more "greened" 

 oysters are consumed in the restaurants of eastern cities than is gener- 

 ally supposed. During the last three years I have found that they 

 occur almost everywhere along the eastern coast. Amongst the locali- 

 ties may be mentioned, Lynn Haven Bay, York and Hongres Elvers, 

 Virginia. I have been told that they occur along the Atlantic coast of 

 Maryland and Virginia, as at Chincoteague Island, for example. I am 

 informed byMr. Carley that they also occur in New York Bay and Long 

 Island Sound ; in fact I have seen some from those localities. A Phila- 

 delphia dealer also tells me that they occur on the coast of New Jersey, 

 both in the vicinity of New York and along the southern portion. I 

 have met with them in a number of instances in saloons where it was 

 impossible to trace them to the beds whence they came. In every case 

 they presented the same appearance as those which I have seen from 

 abroad. The European oysters which have fallen under my observa- 

 tion, and which were most affected, were the French, Falmouth, and 

 Portuguese sorts. 



The most important glandular appendage of the alimentary tract of 

 the oyster is the liver. It communicates, by means of a number of wide 

 ducts, with somewhat plicated walls, with a very irregularly formed cavity, 

 which we may designate as the stomach proper, in which the food of 

 the animal comes into contact with the digestive juices poured out by 

 the ultimate follicles of the liver, to undergo solution preparatory to its 

 absorption during its passage through the singularly-formed intestine. 

 If thin slices of the animal are examined under the microscope, we find 

 the walls of the stomach continuous with the walls of the great ducts 

 of the liver. These great ducts divide and subdivide until they break 

 up into a great number of blind ovoidal sacs with longitudinally folded 

 Ijarietes, into which the biliary secretion is poured from the cells of their 

 walls. A thick stratum of these follicles surrounds the stomach except 

 at its back. It is not quite correct to speak of the liver of the oyster 

 as we speak of the liver of a higher warm-blooded animal. Its function 

 in the oyster is the same as that of tliree different glands in us, viz, the 

 gastric follicles, the pancreas, and liver, to which we may possibly add 

 the salivary, making a total of four in the higher animals which are 



