4 THE OYSTER. 



either on its scientific side or in the light of the 

 experience of other countries, knows that the harvest 

 of oysters from our bay has never, even at its best, 

 made any approach to what it might have been if we 

 had aided the bounty of nature by human industry and 

 intelligence. The four hundred million bushels is the 

 wild crop which has been supplied by nature, without 

 any aid from man, and it compares with what we might 

 have obtained from our waters in about the same way 

 that the nuts and berries which are gathered in our 

 swamps and forests compare with the harvest from 

 our cultivated fields and gardens and orchards. ' 



When we have learned to make wise use of our 

 opportunities, and when the oyster-beds of the bay 

 have been brought to perfection, a harvest of four 

 hundred million bushels in half a century will not be 

 regarded as evidence of fertility. 



It will take many years of labor to bring the whole 

 bay under thorough cultivation, and it will require a 

 great army of industrious and skillful farmers, and 

 great sums of money; but the expense and labor will 

 be much less than an equal area of land above water 

 requires ; and while it may be far away, the time will 

 surely come when the oyster harvest each year will be 

 fully equal to the total harvest of the last fifty years, 

 and it will be obtained without depleting or exhaust- 

 ing the beds, and without exposing the laborers to 

 hardships or unusual risk. 



This is not the baseless speculation of an idle fancy. 

 Our opportunities for rearing oysters are unparalleled 

 in any other part of the world, and in another place I 

 have shown that, in other countries, much less valuable 



