TRANSPLANTING ATLANTIC OYSTERS TO THE PACIFIC 125 



suitable parts of the coasts of our maritime provinces, on both the Atlantic 

 and the Pacific oceans. A suggestion may be made that the shipment, 

 and especially the planting, should be in the hands of somebody acquainted 

 with the physical requirements of the oyster. There is no use going 

 to the trouble and expense of transferring either young or brood oysters 

 to such a distance to be finally dumped into mud, or left exposed to sun 

 and frost, or even to picnickers and Indians. The situations should be 

 carefully and not too hurriedly selected beforehand, and no foolish con- 

 cessions made to the selfish desires of local petty politicians. As an 

 example of the manner in which Government jobs sometimes fall into 

 the hands of incompetent or careless persons, I may mention a former 

 shipment of lobsters to the Pacific, which were, I am told, turned 

 out without first removing the wooden plugs that had been placed in their 

 great claws to prevent them fighting and injuring one another during 

 transit. 



In the United States, oysters have from time to time been taken from 

 the East to the West but, as in Canada, so far as I can learn, never with 

 any very intelligently planned method of planting permanent and pro- 

 ductive colonies. It may have been fancied that the small numbers 

 scattered here or there might some day occasion a startling discovery of 

 an enormous propagation. But it is safer to judge that the larger ship- 

 ments were put out with a view to the local trade. In 1869 three car- 

 loads of eastern oysters were sent to San Francisco, and after over-stocking 

 the market, the rest were planted in the bay, where, it was said, they 

 lived and thrived. In later years it was stated that there had been no 

 success in breeding, and it has been very generally believed that, while 

 Atlantic oysters may live, they will not breed in Pacific waters. 



According to Townsend (1891) : "The oyster industry of the Pacific coast, exclusive 

 of the trade in the small indigenous species, has never extended beyond the limits of 

 the bay of San Francisco, where it has been restricted to the growing or fattening of 

 seed or yearling oysters, brought annually in large quantities from the Atlantic coast 

 and kept in the waters of the bay until they attain a marketable size." 



In November, 1884, seventeen barrels of Canadian oysters were taken 

 to Europe, and, after a journey of almost twenty days, they were planted 

 in the Little Belt, only about 5 per cent of them having died. Their 

 subsequent history does not appear to have been followed. 



A Baseless Belief. — Being aware of the lack of reliable information 

 with regard to the oyster's ability to accommodate itself to new 

 conditions, especially so far away from its native home, and finding 

 myself last summer (1911) at the Dominion Biological Station in De- 

 parture bay near Nanaimo, B.C., within reach of three of the small bays 

 in which Atlantic oysters had been deposited in 1905, I made strenuous 

 efforts, under very unfavourable circumstances, to obtain some satis- 

 factory observations. The prevailing opinion, among those entitled^to 



