The Northern Oyster Field 179 



oyster longing- by outsiders. These measures, however, 

 were insufficient, and natural oyster beds soon disap- 

 peared entirely. They persisted longest at Wellfleet, 

 near the end of the cape, but their destruction came, 

 even here, from excessive fishing about the year 



1775- 



The natural oyster growth on the shores of Con- 

 necticut, Long Island, and Manhattan Island, was so 

 extensive that it was long before there was any anxiety 

 about its depletion. From the time the country was 

 first settled, however, there was a steady decline, and 

 early in the nineteenth century it began to attract at- 

 tention. 



Meanwhile it had been observed that any hard, smooth 

 body thrown into the water near oyster beds in the early 

 summer became covered with young oysters. The pos- 

 sibilities of human control over natural processes 

 wrapped up in such a simple phenomenon, would escape 

 the attention of the great majority of men. To see the 

 possibilities there presented, required imagination — and 

 imagination under intellectual control, such as has ad- 

 vanced science at all times. And a few East River 

 oystermen proved themselves to be real scientists, when, 

 on this simple natural phenomenon, they built up a 

 method of artificial oyster culture that brought material 

 well-being not only to themselves, but to a great number 

 of their countrymen as well. It should not be forgotten, 

 as has been pointed out by Professor Brooks, that before 

 the people of France, England, Belgium, or Germany 

 discovered a method of controlling and vastly improving 

 the natural production by the sea of a great source of 

 human food, these men had found it, and had put it into 

 practice. 



