326 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



price of their product. Under the circumstances there is no possible way of solving 

 the greatest question which now exercises the oyster-growers of this country but 

 to put into their hands a method by the aid of which they can get all the spat they 

 want on their own lands and from the spawn of their oicn oysters. 



jf ^ :^ v^ Jf * * 



The advantages of the method of using the cultch in concentrated bodies, giving 

 an enormous amount of surface for the spat to adhere to, are that it can be 

 conducted on the laud owned by the culturist himself and with the spawn thrown 

 off by the oysters belonging to him. He is, therefore, not bound by any arbitrary 

 oyster laws now existing to conform to what are, generally speaking, very inefficient 

 and often absurd conditions. The new method puts it in the power of the culturist 

 to rear his own seed for planting, and if he is so disposed he may put down an 

 excess of cultch, which he can sell after it is covered with spat to the owners of the 

 open beds in his vicinity. It involves comparatively little outlay to put down a 

 plant which will accommodate 5,000 bushels of cultch, or enough to seed from 20 to 

 30 acres for the first year. Such a system would be of great practical utility in the 

 region of the Chesapeake Bay, where there are very extensive areas upon which, 

 with very inexpensive excavation, the plant for conducting this method of culture 

 could be organized. 



* * » * * » *r 



The plan of the small establishment given in the preceding pages is to be regarded 

 as typical. In the use of the system with crowded or condensed cultch in different 

 localities, modifications of the typical plan may often be advantageously employed. 

 For example, an oyster-planter may have a large pond of 2 or 3 acres thickly 

 planted with spawning oysters and connected with the open water by way of a 

 narrow canal. The pond, if it has a firm bottom over its whole extent, may, if not 

 already used for the purpose, be planted throughout with good seed or ''plants," 

 which, in the course of two years, will be mostly well-grown, marketable oysters. 

 In such a case, several systems of canals could be fed from the single largo inclosure; 

 that is to say, instead of having only a single canal, several zigzag canal systems, 

 each 3 feet in width, might be made to carry the water flowing in and out of the 

 large inclosure, instead of the original channel, which might then be filled up and 

 closed. Or, if it were practicable, the channel connecting the natural pond with 

 the open water might be utilized for the same purpose as artificially constructed 

 canals, provided the cost of modifying it for the purpose were not too great. In 

 some cases, by digging, filling, and dredging, as might be indicated in the course 

 of such a natural channel, it could be prepared for the reception of cultch. Were 

 such a channel wide enough, a system of parallel rows of light piles, the rows 

 being 3 feet 3 inches apart and running lengthwise throughout the course of the 

 channel, might be used to support the receptacles for the cultch, the latter being of 

 the form used in the design of the typical system and supported, as in the latter, 

 upon ledges or scantling spiked horizontally to the rows of piles just below the 

 level of low tide. 



In other cases where there existed narrow points in the course of such a canal 

 these might be used as jetties, still further narrowed in some cases, perhaps, by fill- 

 ing in the sides, after which a system of parallel rows of piles with their horizontal 

 supports of scantling might be constructed between the jetties, and upon which the 

 receptacles filled with cultch could be supported. In this way the fry now dis- 

 charged by spawning oysters from coves through their outlets, sometimes by the 

 thousands of billions annually, can be caught upon cultch and permitted to develop 

 into available spat. 



In many cases the cost of digging out the proper channels or canals to be used in 

 the system of ap])lying the cultch in concentrated form would be greatly diminished 

 by the nature of the ground upon which the canals were dug out. If the level of 

 the earth is not much above that of high water, so much the better, for then the 



