292 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 

 DESCRIPTION OF NATURAL BED. 



Dr. Brooks thus describes a natural oyster bank: 



Au examinatiou of a Coast Survey chart of any part of the Chesapeake Bay or ofi 

 any of its trihutaries -will shoAv that there is usually a niidchamiel or line of deej) 

 water where the bottom is generally soft and where no oysters are met with, and on 

 each side of this an area Avhere the bottom is hard, running from the edge of the 

 channel to the shore. This hard strip is the oyster area. It varies in width from a 

 few yards to several miles, and the depth of water varies upon it from a few feet to 

 5 or 6 fathoms or even more. But there is usually a sudden fall at the edge of the 

 channel where the oysters stop, and we pass onto hard bottom ; and a cross-section 

 of the channel would show a hard, flat plane with oysters on each side of the deeji, 

 muddy channel. The oyster bottom is pretty continuous, exce^it opposite the mouth 

 of a tributary, where it is cut across by a deep, muddy channel. The solid oyster 

 rocks are usually situated along the outer edge of this plateau, although in many 

 cases they are found over its whole width nearly up to low-tide mark or beyond. 

 As we pass soiith along the bays and sounds of Virginia and North Carolina, we nnd 

 that the hard borders of the channel come nearer and nearer to the surface until in 

 the lower part of North Carolina there is on each side of the channel a wide strip of 

 hard bottom, which is bare at low tide and covered with oysters up to high- water 

 mark, although the oysters are most abundant and largest at the edge of the deep 

 water, where they form a well-defined reef. In our own waters there is usually a 

 strip along the shore where no oysters are found, as the depth of Avater is not great 

 enough to protect them in winter. The whole of the hard belt is not uniformly 

 covered with oysters, but it is divided up into separate oyster rocks, between which 

 comparatively few can be found. 



The boundaries of a natural rock which has not been changed by dredging are 

 usually well defined, and few oysters are to be found beyond its limits. The oysters 

 are crowded together so closely that they can not lie flat, but grow vertically upward, 

 side by side. They are long and narrow, are fastened together in clusters, and are 

 known as "coon oj'sters." 



When such a bed is carefully examined it will be found that most of the rock is 

 made up of empty shells, and a little examination will show that the crowding is so 

 great that the growth of one oyster prevents adjacent ones from opening their shells, 

 and thus crowds them out and exterminates them. Examination shows, too, that 

 nearly every one of the living oysters is fastened to the open or free end of a dead 

 shell which has thus been crowded to death, and it is not at all unusual to find a 

 pile of five or six shells thus united, showing that number two has fastened, when 

 small, to the open end of number one, thus raising itself a little above the crowd. 

 After number one was killed, number two continued to grow, and number three fast- 

 ened itself to its shell, and so on. Usually the oysters upon such a bed are<small, but 

 in some places shells 12 or 14 inches longiareimet with. The most significant charac- 

 teristic of a bed of this kind is the sharpness of its boundaries. In regions where 

 the oysters are never disturbed by man it is not unusual to find a hard bottom 

 extending along the edge of the shore for miles and divided up into a number of 

 oyster rocks, where the oysters are so thick that most of them are crowded out and 

 die long before they are full grown, and between these beds are areas where not a 

 single oyster can be found. The intervening area is perfectly adapted for the oyster, 

 and when a few bushels of shells are scattered upon it they are soon covered with 

 young, and in a year or two a new oyster rock is established upon them, but when 

 they are left to themselves the rocks remain sharply defined. 



What is the reason for this sharp limitation of a natural bed? Those who know 

 the oyster only in its adult condition may believe that it is due to the absence of 

 powers of locomotion and may hold that the young oysters grew up among the old 

 ones, just as young oak trees grow up where the acorns fall from the branches. This 

 can not be the true explanation, for the young oysters are swimming animals, and 



