708 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [26] 
to render the sea-bottom between them habitable for oysters. Old beds 
increase naturally in size whenever the shifting and slimy sea-bottom 
which borders them becomes changed into stable and clear ground. 
This can take place if changes occur in the force and direction of the ebb 
and flood currents. In such cases the extension can be hastened artifi- 
cially by placing upon the newly forming ground shells of oysters and 
other mollusks, in order to furnish just outside the borders of the old 
bed the most judicious objects of attachment for the young broods as 
they swarm out from the mother oysters. For the establishment of new 
beds, within the limits of the German sea-flats, in places where no oysters 
are found at present, it will be necessary to find stretches of sea-bottom 
which are free from mud, where the soil is not being constantly shifted 
about by currents, and where the ebb-tide will leave at least one to two 
meters in depth of water over the beds. But nearly all such places are 
at present occupied by oyster-beds. In the year 1876 the buoy-tenders, 
who are best acquainted with the bottom over the entire Schleswig- 
Holstein sea-flats, and who have to mark out the channels for vessels, 
by means of cask and stake buoys (Figs. 1 and 9), sought to find some 
places upon the flats suitable for oyster-beds, where no oysters yet ex-. 
isted. They found within their whole territory only eight such places 
where it might be possible for oysters to thrive; and it would be very 
hazardous to immediately distribute over all these places a great num- 
ber of breeding oysters, since it is yet doubtful whether new beds would 
be able to flourish there or not. It would be much wiser to experiment 
with one only of these places at first. Upon this let oyster and other 
mollusk shells be scattered in May and again shortly before the breed- 
ing period; then, upon the ground thus prepared place several thousand 
mature oysters. If, by next fall, a deposit of young oysters is found to 
have taken place, it will not be certain even then that the experiment 
will prove successful, but only after three or four years, when a large 
number of half-grown oysters are found lying beside the old mother 
oysters, and when these young are found in turn to have produced other 
broods which locate upon the new bed. Over the entire German sea- 
flats lying south and southwest of Schleswig there can hardly be found 
a single place which is suitable for the formation of a protitable oyster- 
bed ; for in front of the mouths of the Hider, Elbe, Weser, Jahde, and 
Ems the sea-bottom is so covered with mud, or so subject to change, that 
oysters could not live and multiply there. In the fall of 1868, when I 
investigated with a dredge-net the sea along the German coast from the 
Hider to Borkum, I found over this entire territory but one single locality 
vpon the coast of Hanover, between the mainland and the island of Juist, 
west of Norderney, which in any manner would be suitable for such an 
experiment. Here, in the spring of 1869, a large number of breeding 
oysters from the Schleswig-Holstein beds were distributed. But no 
permanent bed has been established there, for in June, 1875, during an 
investigation of the bottom near Juist and Borkum, only seven oysters 
