46 WEST AMERICAN SHELLS 
ports. The young oysters when about an inch 
long easily endure the seven or eight days of 
travel across the country, and when planted in our 
bays they thrive and grow rapidly. In three or 
four years they are ready for the market. While 
they do not seem to reproduce very successfully, 
it is certain that some of the young survive and 
grow. More experiments in artificial propaga- 
tion are needed. 
We now come to a very different fam- 
ily of mollusks, namely, the Carditidae. 
Figure 25 gives a good idea of Cardita 
(Carditamera) subquadrata, Cpr., the 
Little Heart-shell, (Lazaria subquadrata). The 
name is very much longer than the shell, of which 
the picture is even too large. It has a firm, hard 
little shell, however, and can easily be identified 
by the strong ribs which radiate from one corner. 
Color, brownish-white, the inside sometimes 
stained with purple. It may sometimes be found 
alive, attached to stones, while dead specimens are 
often washed up with the gravel on the beach. 
In Figure 26 we 
have a life size pic- 
ture of the inside 
of the right valve 
of Calyptogena pa- 
cifica, Dall, the Pa- 
cific Calypto. The 
outside of the shell 
is nearly smooth, 
being marked only by lines of growth, though the 
Fig. 25 
ee 
Fig. 26, (*) 
