112 Our Food Mollusks 



velopment of the operation, by another writer. It was as 

 impracticable as the one just mentioned, and perhaps even 

 more complicated. After long-continued and patient ex- 

 periment, this investigator had met only with discour- 

 agement in his attempts to carry the swimming embryos 

 to the period of attachment, and apparently not being op- 

 timistic concerning the possibilities of artificial fertiliza- 

 tion, he also stated that he formulated this method only 

 for those who would persist in the attempt to make some- 

 thing of it. He reached one conclusion that was sound 

 when he stated that " it will at any rate do no harm to 

 liberate a few millions of embryos [obtained] in this 

 manner over a bed." 



It is strange that some person living on the shore has 

 not appeared, during the last quarter of a century, with 

 curiosity enough to crush a few oysters with a stone, 

 and shake them in a bucket of water in imitation of the 

 above mentioned experiments. If he had done so, the 

 chances are that he would have succeeded as well in ob- 

 taining swimming embryos, and gotten nearly as far 

 toward a solution of the practical problem of rearing them 

 as any one has to the present. 



The unfortunate thing concerning these publications is 

 that they have been read and copied and read again by 

 the really intelligent element among oystermen and others 

 who were interested, until the popular mind from New 

 England to Texas seems perfectly possessed with the 

 idea that the culture of oysters — and clams, also — from 

 artificially fertilized eggs may, with a little more experi- 

 ment, become a great achievement of science that will 

 give wonderful practical results. After twenty-five years, 

 shell-fish commission reports still refer to it hopefully. 

 The commissioner of one great oyster state, for example, 



