112 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



a greater quantity and in an easier manner. Instead of as at one time 

 using oyster shells for the building of roads, or burning to lime, he will 

 save them for cultch. He soon learns that a greater success results from 

 planting during or near the spawning season, by using perfectly clean 

 shells, by scattering them broadcast, or by spreading them in a tideway. 

 As much as 1000 or 1200 bushels per acre are used. In the autumn of 

 the same season, he dredges, rakes, or tongs up shells from different parts 

 of the area planted, to see if they have succeeded in a good catch of spat. 

 In case they have, he may leave them undisturbed for three or four years, 

 and then take up and send the grown oysters to the market. Instead 

 of this, however, he may dredge over the bed in the second year from 

 planting the cultch, break the bunches apart to prevent crowding and 

 distortion, perhaps redistribute over the same beds or transfer, and if 

 he is anxious for quick returns, may sell part as seed. In the third year 

 he may cull out the largest for sale, leaving the greater mass to be marketed 

 in the fourth year, after which the ground is again prepared for planting 

 fresh shells. 



A disadvantage in the use of oyster or other shells as cultch is that 

 each shell may catch more spat than have room to grow, and on account 

 of the thickness and strength of the shell on which they are fastened the 

 spat can not naturally break apart. In some places, as in Connecticut, 

 small gravel of which each piece could give attachment to only one or 

 two spat has been substituted with success. Where the bottom is not 

 hard, as in portions of Long Island sound, sand or gravel has been used to 

 make a crust on the surface of the mud before planting shells. 



In the capture of spat all places are not equally fortunate. It is a 

 mistake to suppose there are floating larvse everywhere in an extensive 

 oyster region. Cultch must be sown in proximity to living oyster beds, 

 or in the way of currents coming from the beds, in order that larvse may 

 spread to it either by their own swarming or by the movements of 

 the water. Another practice is to distribute sexually mature and breeding 

 oysters (brood oysters, spawners) over artificial beds, to make sure of the 

 presence of fertilized eggs, with their succeeding larvse and spat, in the 

 midst of the planted shells. 



Complex, laborious and expensive methods, such as those of France 

 and Holland, have not been resorted to in the United States. Tiles, 

 claires and the like are too costly in a country possessing such extensive 

 natural facilities, where oysters are cheap and labour dear. Artificial 

 methods have been chiefly directed towards the procuring and raising 

 of seed oysters, and the fattening and flavouring of oysters of poor quality, 

 that would otherwise find no market. Limited experiments have been 

 tried from time to time, in one place or another, with a view to testing 

 this method or that, suggested to the culturist or adopted from foreign 

 countries, but they have never been brought into general use. In 1879, 



