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is from one direction or another. These wind tides, although they 

 may be considerable are, nevertheless, very irregular, and they 

 cannot be depended upon to produce the necessary currents over 

 an oyster bed. It is important then to select grounds where 

 the water is affected by the daily tide. However slight that may 

 be, it can always be depended upon to produce a more or less 

 constant current. A bedding ground located in a cove although 

 it may be subject to the influence of the tides, receives but littls 

 current, the water merely rising and falling. At the mouth 

 of such a cove there is a current due to the water flowing in and 

 out as the tide rises or falls; and this current is great or less, 

 according as the bay is large or small. 



Food Supply. — The average oysterman can no more deter- 

 mine the amount of available oyster food in the water than 

 the average man can determine the available heat that will be 

 produced by each pound of coal that he burns. As stated above, 

 diatoms are more or less abundant in the water everywhere, yet 

 it is well to know, that the places in which they multiply most 

 rapidly, are warm, brackish waters. It is in such places that 

 they are found in such abundance as to number as many as 

 110,000 to the liter, or about a quart. These microscopic plants 

 multiply very rapidly when the conditions are right and these 

 are most favorable in our shallow, brackish waters, where the 

 bright sunlight warms the water and enables them to manufac- 

 ture their own food from carbon dioxide and water. Such 

 shallow brackish bays may be termed the breeding places of the 

 diatoms, not that they don't multiply anywhere else, but be- 

 cause it is here that they increase with the greatest prolificness. 

 Here, then, is oyster food in great abundance, but in places 

 that are not at all suitable for oyster growth. How then can 

 we get the oyster and food together? Simply this, the currents, 

 At low tide, the water will naturally flow out of the bays and 

 with this drainage immense quantities of the diatoms are carried 

 out and float down with the currents. Here, then, is another 

 favorable condition for an oyster bed, namely, in such localities 

 that the currents that pass over it at the ebb tide shall come 

 from such bodies of water as are shallow and brackish. 



Such an ideal condition for oyster beds is found in Grand 

 Bayou du Large, Grand Caillou, Bayou Rose, Terrebonne Parish, 



