I 4 THE OYSTER. 



to rely upon nature alone; and this fact, which has 

 been proved again and again by statistics, is perfectly 

 clear to any one who knows what an oyster is, and 

 what are its relations to the world around it. As its 

 world is chiefly microscopic, no one can penetrate into 

 the secrets of its structure and history without training 

 in the technical methods of the laboratory; and busi- 

 ness contact with the oyster cannot possibly, with any 

 amount of experience, give any real insight into its 

 habits and mode of life. 



I speak on this subject with the diffidence of one 

 who has been frequently snubbed and repressed; for 

 while I am myself sure of the errors of the man who 

 tonged oysters long before I was born, and who loudly 

 asserts his right to know all about it, it is easier to 

 acquiesce than to struggle against such overwhelming 

 ignorance, so I have learned to be submissive in the 

 presence of the elderly gentleman who studied the 

 embryology of the oyster when years ago as a boy he 

 visited his grandfather on the Eastern Shore, and to 

 listen with deference to the shucker as he demonstrates 

 to me at his raw-box, by the aid of his hammer and 

 shucking-knife, the fallacy of my notions of the struc- 

 ture of the animal. 



Still I may be permitted to state that I am not totally 

 without experience. I have dredged oysters in every 

 part of the bay, from Swan Point and the Bodkin, to 

 Craney Island and Lynn Haven. I have tonged oys- 

 ters in five different States ; and in the warm waters of 

 the South, where frost is unknown and the oysters 



