[15] FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



siau embryologists, whose work will be noticed at length farther on. 

 While the subject has received the attention of a number of observers, 

 no one has been able to get anything like a complete series of the early 

 stages of development, and I approached my work without hope of ac- 

 complishing much of purely scientific value, although I did expect to 

 obtain some information as to the time and conditions of spawning, and 

 other questions of economic interest. My uncertainty of success was 

 increased by the total failure of an attempt which I had made the sum- 

 mer before. 



"All the published papers upon the subject state that the eggs are 

 fertilized inside the body of the parent, and that the young are carried 

 inside the parent shell until they are quite well advanced in develop- 

 ment, and provided with shells of their own; that they swim about after 

 they are discharged from the i>areut until they find a place to attach 

 themselves, but that they undergo no change of structure between the 

 time when they leave the parent and the time when they become fixed. 

 Misled by these statements, which are not true with our species, I 

 opened numbers of oysters during the summer of 1878, and carefully 

 examined the contents of the gills and mantle chambers, but found no 

 young oysters. I concluded that the time during which the young are 

 carried by the parent must be so short that I had missed it, and I en- 

 tered upon the work this season with the determination to examine 

 adult oysters every day through tlie breeding season in search of young, 

 and at the same time try to raise the young for myself by artificially fer- 

 tilizing the eggs after 1 had removed them from the body of the parent. 



"I met with complete success with .the second method from the begin- 

 ing, and succeeded in raising countless millions of young oysters, and 

 in tracing them through all their stages of development until they had 

 acquired all the characteristics which the European embryologists have 

 described and figured in the young of the European oyster at the time 

 it leaves its parent to become fixed for life. 



''I reached Crisfield on the 19th of May, and established myself about 

 three miles from the town and about half a mile from Pokamoke Sound, 

 and on Monday, the 21st, I opened a dozen fresh oysters, and found 

 three females with their ovaries filled with ripe ova, and one male with 

 ripe spermatozoa. 



"I mixed the contents of the reproductive organs of these four oys- 

 ters, and within two hours after the commencement of my first experi- 

 ment, I learned by the microscope that the attempt at artificial fertili- 

 zation was successful, and that nearly all of my eggs had started on 

 their long path towards the adult form. 



"I made careful microscopic examination of the gills and mantles of 

 all these oysters, but neither at this time nor afterwards did I find any 

 fertilized eggs or young inside the parent shell, although I examined 

 more than a thousand adults during the season. During the summer 

 I found females with the ovaries so distended with ripe eggs that they 



