16 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [310] 
met with at low water, under or among rocks, and generally attached 
by a byssus, but their proper home is in the shallow waters off shore, 
especially on muddy, shelly, and gravelly bottoms. The fishermen eall 
them “ bloody claws,” because the gills are red, and when opened they 
discharge a red fluid like blood. The little shell called Kellia planulata 
(Plate XXX, fig. 226) is also sometimes found under stones at low 
water. Attached to the sides and surfaces of rocks and ledges along 
many parts of this coast, young oysters, Osirwa Virginiana, often 
occur in vast numbers, sometimes completely covering and concealing 
large surfaces of rocks. But these generally live only through one 
season and are killed by the cold of winter, so that they seldom be- 
come more than an inch or an inch and a half in diameter. They come 
from the spawn of the oysters in the beds aiong our shores, which, dur- 
ing the breeding season, completely fill the waters with their free- 
swimming young. Theyare generally regarded as the young of “native” 
oysters, but Iam unable to find any specifie differences between the 
northern and southern oysters, such differences as do exist being due 
merely to the circumstances under which they grow, such as the char- 
acter of the water, abundance or scarcity of food, kind of objects to 
which they are attached, age, crowded condition, &c. All the forms 
occur both among the northern and southern ones, for they vary from 
broad and round to very long and narrow; from very thick to very 
thin; and in the character of the surface, some being regularly ribbed 
and scolloped, others nearly smooth, and others very rough and irregular, 
or scaly, &c. When young and grown under favorable conditions, 
with plenty of room, the form is generally round at first, then quite 
regularly oval, with an undulated and scolloped edge and radiating 
ridges, corresponding to the scollops, and often extending out into 
spine-like projections on the lower valve. The upper valve is flatter, 
smooth at first, then with regular lamelle or scales, scolloped at the 
edges, showing the stages of growth. Later in life, especially after the 
first winter, the growth becomes more irregular, and the form less sym- 
metrical; and the irregularity increases with the age. Very old speci- 
mens, in crowded beds, usually become very much elongated, being 
often more than a foot long, and perhaps two inches wide. In the 
natural order of things this was probably the normal form attained by the 
adult individuals, for nearly all the oyster-shells composing the ancient 
Indian shell-heaps along our coast are of this much-elongated kind. 
Nowadays the oysters seldom have a chance to grow to such a good old 
age as to take this form, though such are occasionally met with in deep 
water. The young specimens on the rocks are generally mottled or ir- 
regularly radiated with brown. They were not often met with on the 
shores of Vineyard Sound, for oysters do not flourish well in that sandy 
region, though there are extensive beds in some parts of Buzzard’s 
Bay, and a few near Holmes’s Hole, in a sheltered pond. The oysters 
prefer quiet waters, somewhat brackish, with a bottom of soft mud 
