THE OYSTER. II: 



Where scallop shells, as in Narragansett Bay, or, as in 

 northern New Jersey mussels and jingles, Anomia, can 

 be procured in sufficient quantities, they are undoubt- 

 edly better than anything else, because they not only 

 break easily in culling, but are so fragile that the strain 

 of the growth of two or more oysters attached to a 

 single scallop or muscle-valve will often crack it in 

 pieces, and so permit the several members of the bunch 

 to separate and grow into good shape singly. I am 

 not aware that any of the elaborate arrangements made 

 in France and England for catching and preserving 

 the spat have ever been imitated here, to any practical 

 extent. The time will come, no doubt, when we shall 

 be glad to profit by this foreign example and ex- 

 perience. 



" Although the effort to propagate oysters by catch- 

 ing drifting spawn upon prepared beds has been tried 

 nearly everywhere from Sandy Hook to Providence, 

 it has only, in the minority of cases, perhaps I might 

 say a small minority of cases, proved a profitable un- 

 dertaking to those engaging in it ; and many planters 

 have abandoned the process, or at least calculated but 

 little upon any prepared beds, in estimating the prob- 

 able income of the prospective season. This arises 

 from one of two causes: 1st, the failure of spawn to 

 attach itself to the cultch ; or, 2d, in case a ' set ' occurs, 

 a subsequent death or destruction. 



' The supposition among oystermen generally has 

 been that the water everywhere upon the coast was 

 filled, more or less, with drifting oyster-spat during 



