Conditions Governing Oyster Growth 105 



extensive, and one naturally asks where the planter ob- 

 tains his seed. When the states with oyster shores passed 

 laws allowing individuals or companies to buy or lease 

 bottoms for oyster culture, they very generally reserved 

 the natural beds for common seed grounds. Serious 

 trouble has arisen everywhere because of the difficulty in 

 formulating a satisfactory definition of a natural bed. 

 But the plan of reserving wild oysters was essentially a 

 good one, because they usually assured a set of spat. 

 Planted oysters, of course, also spawn, but it might hap- 

 pen in any locality that there would be few or none of 

 them left during the breeding season. Planters are usu- 

 ally allowed to gather small oysters from natural beds 

 for planting. These are culled and placed on new bot- 

 toms. In the North, where this has been practised for 

 many years, the natural beds in some localities have be- 

 come depleted; but in Connecticut, the greatest of seed 

 producing states, there are still six thousand acres of 

 natural beds that usually yield a large number of seed 

 oysters. 



Many years ago the planters of New England and New 

 York conceived the plan of purchasing seed from the 

 South. There were many localities, especially in the 

 Chesapeake, where the set of spat was abundant and 

 rarely failed. There was then no planting done in Mary- 

 land or Virginia, and the business of transporting seed to 

 the North became, and for many years remained, a very 

 great one. To-day, however, it has quite passed. 



There were two reasons for this. The people of Vir- 

 ginia finally woke to the fact that if it paid to transport 

 seed to the North for planting in the relatively unfavor- 

 able waters there, it certainly should pay to plant the seed 

 already at hand on barren bottoms in their own fertile 



