10 THE OYSTER. 



ture were developed, and here art, literature and sci- 

 ence had their birth. 



We owe to the great river-valleys, where the natural 

 fertility of the soil has lightened the struggle for 

 bread and has afforded leisure for higher matters, all 

 that is most distinctive of civilized man. 



The Chesapeake Bay is a great river-valley; not as 

 large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but of enough con- 

 sequence to play an important part in human affairs, 

 and to support in comfort and prosperity a population 

 as great as that of many famous states. It receives 

 the drainage of a vast area of fertile land stretching 

 over the meadows and hillsides of nearly one-third of 

 New York, and nearly all of the great agricultural states 

 of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. The most 

 valuable part of the soil of this great tract of farming 

 land, more than forty million acres in area, ultimately 

 finds its way to the bay, in whose quiet waters it 

 makes a long halt on its journey to the ocean, and it 

 is deposited, all over the bay, in the form of fine, light, 

 black sediment, known as oyster-mud. 



This is just as valuable to man, and just as fit to 

 nourish plants, as the mud which settles every year on 

 the wheat fields and rice fields of Egypt. It is a 

 natural fertilizer of inestimable importance, and it is so 

 rich in organic matter that it putrefies in a few hours 

 when exposed to the sun. In the shallow waters of 

 the bay, under the influence of the warm sunlight, it 

 produces a most luxuriant vegetation; but with few 

 exceptions, the plants which grow upon it are micro- 

 scopic and invisible, and their very existence is un- 

 known to all except a few naturalists. They are not 



