272 Our Food Mollusks 



that abounds in the bay during the summer. Seed 

 oysters reach a marketable size in three or four years. 



It was not until 1894 that eastern oyster seed was 

 planted in Willapa Bay. This shoal body of water is 

 twenty-five miles long, and has an average width of about 

 five miles. It has always been a famous bedding place 

 for native oysters. Eastern seed from Maryland, New 

 Jersey and Long Island, planted here by the U. S. Fish 

 Commission, grew as well as in San Francisco Bay. A 

 hundred car-loads of seed oysters, varying in size from a 

 quarter of an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, 

 are sometimes planted in a year. During the last few 

 years eastern oysters have been planted in Puget Sound, 

 but not yet in large numbers. 



In spite of the fact that freight charges on eastern 

 seed amount to five hundred, or at times to more than 

 seven hundred dollars a car, the trade is growing on the 

 Pacific coast. Retail prices are necessarily high. 



It is a fact of economic as well as of biologic interest 

 that these transported oysters do not often reproduce in 

 Pacific waters. To the present time, not a case of at- 

 tachment by a swimming eastern oyster has been ob- 

 served in the state of Washington. In 1889, however, 

 it was discovered by an investigator of the U. S. Fish 

 Commission that they were breeding in a few places at 

 the south end of San Francisco Bay, and hopes were en- 

 tertained that they might become well established there. 

 These hopes have not been fulfilled. 



The adverse condition in this case is probably the low 

 temperature of the water. The fact may not be well 

 known on the eastern coast that the waters of northern 

 California, of Oregon, and of Washington are, during 

 the summer, as icy as those of Maine. There is little 



