290 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



This mode of quieting the appetite for dinner appears to continue to the present 

 day. A diet of raw oysters is an excellent remedy for dyspepsia. 



The Pilgrims landing on the shores of what is now Massachusetts found oysters 

 in great abundance and used by the Indians, and oysters were served at the first 

 Thanksgiving dinner on this continent. The oyster industry of the world is chiefly in 

 the United States and France. A few natural beds yet remain in Great Britain and 

 France; the latter country has the best conducted oyster-culture, and seems with 

 Holland to monopolize the trade of Europe, especially in oyster seed and the culture 

 thereof. 



In the census of 1890 the United States, in a comparative statement, is credited 

 with an annual catch of 5,550,000,000 oysters, France 080,400,000, Great Britain 

 1,600,000,000, and Canada 22,000,000; the catches of the rest of the countries of the 

 world are comparatively small, with Holland and Italy in respective order, the total 

 for Europe being 2,331,200,000. The eastern coast of North America produces as 

 much as all the rest of the world combined, and this very fact is full of importance to 

 us in the consideration of the matter before us. 



About 100 years ago the French and English oyster supply was supposed to be 

 inexhaustible, yet it was not long before they were fighting for legislation, just as we 

 are doing to-day. The first legislation respecting oysters seems to have been during 

 the reign of James I, about 1606. The features of this legislation, cooperated in by 

 both countries on account of the contiguity of their oyster-beds in the English Chan- 

 nel, and in effect to-day, is largely what we have learned by our own experience, not 

 only in the northern waters but in Florida, viz: No dredging, except in private beds; 

 a closed season, May 1 to September 1; oysters less than 2 inches thrown back on 

 the reefs; no ballast thrown on any oyster-bars. The customs officers are authorized 

 to enforce these laws. 



Such are the avarice and cupidity of man that through all these thousands of 

 years he has not learned that it is the greatest folly to attempt to live on Nature's 

 bank account without providing some return for the drafts made. All America, and 

 Florida especially, with all the experience of the past to profit by, is destroying her 

 natural wealth in every direction. 



As before stated, oysters are found along the North American coast all the way 

 down to the western end of the Gulf of Mexico. They are apparently much of the 

 same nature, but some naturalists claim that the southern oyster is different from 

 the northern ; yet both varieties are found not only in Long Island Sound but in the 

 Gulf of Mexico, and while growth changes their appearance it is owing to the nature 

 of the surroundings the bottom, the water, and the food. The principal oyster- 

 grounds of the world are in the Chesapeake Bay. The abundance with which Nature 

 blessed that region may not endure through the next half century without further 

 protection by legislation, yet it is likely that there will be at all times public oyster- 

 grounds in the United States, as in England and France, although any attempt to 

 interfere with the so-called rights of fishermen on the oyster-banks has always met 

 with strenuous opposition. 



A hundred years ago oysters were plentiful from Maine to the Delaware Capes, 

 and while some few are still found about the northern coast of New England, they are 

 not sufficient to make the business profitable in that section. Along the Connecticut 

 and Khode Island coasts and down into Long Island Sound the oyster interests are 

 managed in an energetic and systematic manner. New Haven is the pioneer in Euro- 



