258 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



When all the barrels bad been placed on the deck of the small steamer 

 we had one of them opened, and were rejoiced to find only a few dead 

 oysters on the top; the lower layers were all firmly closed and emitted 

 no odor. Although removed fron tbeir native element, they had suc- 

 cessfully stood a journey of almost twenty days, and there was every 

 prospect that when again placed in the sea they would thrive. After a 

 sail of two hours we reached Aaroesund, where fishermen well acquainted 

 with the locality, aided by the crew of the revenue-cutter stationed at 

 Aaroesund, took the oysters to those places where they were to be 

 planted under our directions. The weather was favorable. We first 

 selected a place southeast of Aaroe, where the bottom was tolerably firm 

 and with only a few aquatic plants here and there. Before planting 11 

 barrels of oysters, a boat-load of broken bricks and tiles was dumped 

 into the water, in order to provide suitable objects to which thu young 

 oysters might adhere. The other 6 barrels were planted northwest of 

 Aaroe, near the coast of Sleswick. 



With the purpose of ascertaining the entire number of oysters, we 

 had the contents of one barrel counted. It contained 800 oysters, and 

 we have therefore planted about 13,000. While the oysters were being- 

 thrown into the water the ship was placed at anchor, but from time to 

 time a little more of the chain was paid out, so that we slowly moved 

 a little towards the east-northeast. We had a map of the Little Belt, 

 and the places where we planted the oysters were properly marked, so 

 that they can be found at any time without difficulty. None of the 

 places where our Canadian oysters were planted were the same where 

 Engineer Meyer in 1880 planted smaller American oysters. 



As one barrel after the other was opened and emptied we were re- 

 joiced to find that at most only 5 per cent, of the oysters were dead. 

 Those which were alive kept their shells as firmly closed as if they had 

 been taken from the water only a few days before. Some which were 

 opened were found to be entirely free from any disagreeable flavor and 

 tasted as fresh as if they had left the bed very recently. The North 

 American oysters which I tasted at the Fishery Exhibitions of Berlin 

 and London did not have as fine a flavor as these Canadian oysters. 

 They had not been washed before packing, for their shells were covered 

 with yellow mud. Besides this mud from the oyster-beds there were 

 found in the barrels many shells of Crepidulq fornicata L., a snail which 

 is frequently found on the oysters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, as 

 stated by A. A. Gould in his work, Invertebrates of Massachusetts, 

 Mollusca, 2d ed., 1870, p. 202. 



After we had consigned the oysters to the sea, and requested the 

 crew of the revenue-cutter to see to it that they were not disturbed, we 

 returned to Hadersleben in the afternoon, and in the evening had a 

 conference with several persons who had aided us or were to aid us in 

 the future. Early on November 7 we left Hadersleben, happy in the 

 thought that the second attempt to plant North American oysters on 



