The Rise And Decline Of The Ol^mpia Oyster 



down the walls of the tunnel. The flow becomes larger 

 and larger. It makes a noise like a cascade. The water 

 from the upper dikes carries with it a great quantity of 

 soil from the upper dike,, as well as the oysters, and de- 

 posits the entire mess on the oysters in the next dike 

 below. 



Such an experience, and there were many of them, 

 required major repairs, causing expenses and hard labor. 



Second, in some more level areas, crawfish are very 

 numerous. Humphrey Nelson, who has a considerable 

 amount of this kind of ground, says there may be as 

 many as twenty crawfish per square foot. In that case, 

 the quantity of sand thrown up, a little pile by each craw- 

 fish, becomes a large quantity in the aggregate. The tides 

 flatten out these piles, and gradually the oysters become 

 covered. 



The loss became so heavy to many growers that they 

 became discouraged and abandoned their ground. 

 Not so with Humphrey Nelson and his step-father, U. G. 

 Young. They solved it by covering the ground with lum- 

 ber or plywood, then covering that with three or four 

 inches of gravel. This prevented the sand from coming 

 up; their yield of oysters increased by fifty per cent. 



DRILLS 



The so called drill is a species of the snail family. The 

 native snail is about one and a half inches long when ma- 

 ture. I have never seen one drilling an oyster, although 

 I have heard it said that they do drill seed oysters. But, 

 a real drill, one that has the equipment and the ability 

 to drill a nice little round hole in the shell of an oyster 



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