THE OYSTER. 85 



surface, until in the lower part of North Carolina there 

 is on each side of the channel a wide strip of hard 

 bottom, which is bare at low tide and covered with 

 oysters up to high-water mark, although the oysters 

 are most abundant and largest at the edge of the deep 

 water, where they form a well-defined reef. In our 

 own waters there is usually a strip along the shore 

 where no oysters are found, as the depth of water is 

 not great enough to protect them in winter. The 

 whole of the hard belt is not uniformly covered with 

 oysters, but it is divided up into separate oyster rocks, 

 between which comparatively few can be found. 



The boundaries of a natural rock which has not been 

 changed by dredging are usually well defined, and 

 few oysters are to be found beyond its limits. The 

 oysters are crowded together so closely that they can- 

 not lie flat, but grow vertically upwards, side by side. 

 They are long and narrow, are fastened together in 

 clusters, and are known as " coon oysters." 



When such a bed is carefully examined it will be 

 found that most of the rock is made up of empty shells, 

 and a little examination will show that the crowding 

 is so great that the growth of one oyster prevents ad- 

 jacent ones from opening their shells, and thus crowds 

 them out and exterminates them. Examination shows, 

 too, that nearly every one of the living oysters is 

 fastened to the open or free end of a dead shell which 

 has thus been crowded to death, and it is not at all 

 unusual to find a pile of five or six shells thus united, 

 showing that number two had fastened, when small, 



