THE OYSTER. 5 



grounds have by cultivation been made to yield oys- 

 ters at a rate per acre which, on our own great beds, 

 would carry our annual harvest very far beyond the 

 sum of all the oysters which have ever been used by 

 the packers of Maryland and Virginia. 



This is capable of proof by the evidence of other 

 countries, but I wish to show now that it is proved 

 with equal conclusiveness by the natural history of the 

 oyster. 



The Chesapeake Bay is one of the richest agricul- 

 tural regions of the earth, and its fertility can be com- 

 pared only with that of the valleys of the Nile and the 

 Ganges and other great rivers. It owes its fertility to 

 the very same causes as those which have enabled the 

 Nile valley to support a dense human population for 

 untold ages without any loss of fertility ; but it is 

 adapted for producing only one crop, the oyster. 



All human food is vegetable in its origin, and 

 whether we eat plants and their products directly, or 

 use beef, mutton, pork, fowls or eggs as food, it all 

 carries us back to the vegetable kingdom ; for if there 

 were no plants, all animals would starve at once. 

 Everyone knows that this is absolutely true of all ter- 

 restrial animals, and all naturalists know that it is 

 equally true of sea-food. The blue-fish preys on 

 smaller fishes ; many of these on still smaller ones ; 

 these in their turn upon minute Crustacea ; these upon 

 still smaller animals ; and these pasture on the micro- 

 scopic plants which swarm at the surface of the ocean. 

 However long the chain may be, all animals, those of 

 the water as well as those of the land, depend on plants 

 for food, although most of the vegetable life of the 



