The Oysters 



size of a pin head, and continues through life. It swallows the 

 spat, and oysters up to three inches long. Its stomach is turned 

 wrong side out, and often wrapped around the victim, which is 

 overcome by the digestive fluids. The flexible arms clasp the 

 oyster shell, adhering by means of their rows of sucking disks. 

 Dr. Schiemenz believes the star actually forces apart the valves 

 of large shells by main strength. It holds on until the victim's 

 strength is gone, then thrusts its inverted stomach into the in- 

 terior and absorbs the contents. 



Starfishes go in schools, migrating from place to place, destroy- 

 ing the victims in their path. In brackish water they do little 

 harm, but in outside beds destruction may be complete before 

 the owner suspects that anything is wrong. 



The "tangle," a great mop made of bunches of ravelled 

 rope, supported on iron rods, is let down from a vessel, by davitts 

 with block and fall, and drawn across the oyster beds. Stars 

 of varying sizes are brought up. entangled in its meshes. The 

 best equipped boats have a trough of water heated by connec- 

 tion with the boiler of the engine. Into this the mops are plunged. 

 It kills the stars, and the tangle is lowered again. With this 

 labour and time saving device, using two tangles, alternately 

 hauled, over one hundred thousand starfishes have been gathered 

 in a single day. A bed is not considered safe to leave as long 

 as half a bushel of stars can be caught in a day. 



Drills are so small as to make their capture very difficult. 

 An eye out for drills is a prime necessity in dredging and culling. 

 The tangle gets a few, but this is incidental. A dredge with fine 

 screen sides and bottom, and lid of inch mesh screen has a sharp 

 iron lip. Dragged along the bottom, this scoops up everything 

 that is loose ; the drills and other small debris fall into the dredge, 

 the coarse material passes over the lid, and is left behind. The 

 dredge is drawn up, and the drills destroyed. 



In any dredging many young oysters are destroyed. But 

 dredging for enemies is the lesser of two evils. 



Crabs are a formidable oyster enemy in Chesapeake Bay. 

 They are also profitable shell fish ; so they are permitted to live 

 until of marketable age, though they cause great damage to the 

 oyster beds. A tangle takes them up in great numbers. 



The sting ray or ''stingaree" menaces the oyster beds in 

 San Francisco Bay. To exclude this enemy palisades of stakes 



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