OYSTER CULTURE EXPERIMENTS IN LOUISIANA. 49 



subject to disaster from freshets would prove of benefit to the beds 

 designated and to oyster culture in general. It would result in saving 

 mau}^ thousand barrels of oysters wdiich would otherwise die from the 

 effects of fresh water and crowding or which would never reach a 

 good marketable condition owing to starvation and suffocation from 

 an overpopulation of the reefs. 



3. Beds known to produce few or no marketable oysters on ac- 

 count of overcrowding should be temporarily set apart as seed beds, 

 from which the planters may secure culled oysters for bedding pur- 

 poses under the provisions of the present law permitting such oysters 

 to be taken after the close of the regular season. The provision of 

 the law permitting this practice in the waters east of the western 

 boundary of Plaquemines Parish could be advantageously extended, 

 under the restriction just stated, to other parts of the state. 



4. It will prove of great advantage in the future and will avoid 

 ultimate embarrassment and expense to both the state and the lessees 

 of oyster bottom if some measure can be adopted to insure the refer- 

 ence of leasehold corners to permanent landmarks in such manner 

 that disputed boundaries can be accurately redetermined. This sug- 

 gestion may appear to be of but little present importance, but the 

 experience of other states shows that ultimately it must be followed. 



5. The results of the foregoing investigations, and observations 

 made during their course, indicate that as a potential oyster-produc- 

 ing state Louisiana is not excelled, if equalled, by any other section 

 of the countr3^ Wherever experiments were conducted it was shown 

 that there was an abundant strike of spat, and the indications are 

 that this can be depended upon to occur yearly without fail, though 

 in some cases it is often destroyed by the borer. This danger, how- 

 ever, is not to be feared in any place wdiere the specific gravity of 

 the water is less than 1,012 — that is, where there is an admixture of 

 about equal parts of salt and fresh water — and the seed-producing 

 area of the state is therefore ample to support an immense planting 

 industr3\ The Louisiana planter has consequently little to fear from 

 the bugbear of his northern confrere, the occasional or frequent 

 scarcity of seed. 



G. The depth of water over most of the oyster-producing area of 

 the state is so small as to minimize the cost of taking up the oysters, 

 and the comparatively sheltered situation of much of the bottom 

 suitable for oyster culture, and the mildness of the weather as com- 

 pared with that encountered in more northern localities during the 

 oyster season, allow the work to be prosecuted with less frequent 

 interruptions and therefore more economically. The warmer tem- 

 perature in spring and fall, however, tends somewhat to reduce the 

 length of the season. 



