THE OYSTER. 1 3 



teach much more than this. It will show the capacity 

 of the oyster for cultivation, and it will also show why 

 its cultivation is necessary, and why our resources 

 can never be fully developed by oysters in a state of 

 nature. We have never enjoyed the hundredth part 

 of our advantage, nor can we ever do so if we continue 

 to rely upon nature alone ; and this fact, which has 

 been proved again and again by statistics, is perfectly 

 clear to any one who knows what an oyster is, and 

 what are its relations to the world around it. As its 

 world is chiefly microscopic, no one can penetrate into 

 the secrets of its structure and history without training 

 in the technical methods of the laboratory ; and busi- 

 ness contact with the oyster cannot possibly, with any 

 amount of experience, give any real insight into its 

 habits and mode of life. 



I speak on this subject with the diffidence of one 

 who has been frequently snubbed and repressed; for 

 while I am myself sure of the errors of the man who 

 tonged oysters long before I was born, and who loudly 

 asserts his right to know all about it, it is easier to 

 acquiesce than to struggle against such overwhelming 

 ignorance, so I have learned to be submissive in the 

 presence of the elderly gentleman who studied the 

 embryology of the oyster when years ago as a boy he 

 visited his grandfather on the Eastern Shore, and to 

 listen with deference to the shucker as he demonstrates 

 to me at his raw-box, by the aid of his hammer and 

 shucking knife, the fallacy of my notions of the struc- 

 ture of the animal. 



Still I may be permitted to state that I am not 

 totally without experience. I have dredged oysters 



