524 HISTOKY AND MF/niOI)S OF THE FISIIFIMFS. 



After the harvest is finished not a few oysters will yet remain on the beds. The grounds of 

 many of the owners are then given up to the laborers who have worked them on hire. Under a 

 new impulse these men 'go over the grounds again with tongs and dredge. In some cases they 



work on shares, paying to the owner of the beds one-half or one-third of the results, which makes 







a really handsome thing for the gleaners, whose work in this way lasts from two to three weeks, 



making three or four days a week, each man often clearing as his portion from four to five dollars 

 a day. 



In Delaware Bay the scene of bedding southern oysters is altogether on the western, or Dela- 

 ware shore, where 700,000 or 800,000 bushels are laid down every spring, to be taken up for 

 marketing in Philadelphia each fall. 



5. THE TRANSPLANTING OF "NATIVE SEED." 



REVIEW OF THE INDUSTRY. The cultivation of oysters transplanted when young (termed 

 " seed ") from the natural reefs where they were spawned to inshore, proprietary grounds, or 

 " beds," and yielding a salable crop after several years' growth, under watchful attention, has long 

 been followed in the United States, and is now to be considered. The practice began everywhere 

 as soon as the natural supply of marketable oysters diminished, and at some points has consti- 

 tuted a very large industry. The inquiry is hence an extensive one, but it is restricted to a com- 

 paratively narrow compass. 



In the Gulf of Maine the few attempts made have not been encouraging, on account of cost 

 of seed, unfavorable climate, and living enemies.* 



For similar reasons there are no important planting interests in the remote South. In the 

 Gulf of Mexico almost nothing of the sort is called for, except at Mobile, where 3,000 or 4,000 

 bushels are annually transplanted; these are obtained from salt water between Mobile Bay and 

 Biloxi, Mississippi, and are deposited in front of each oysterman's land, loward the head of the 

 bay. A permanent colony of oysters usually follows such a deposit, so that little new stock need 

 be added, until the crowding and the concourse of enemies have destroyed its good qualities, when 

 a new foundation is selected. Though these "plants" exceed in quality and price the best wild 

 oysters sent to Mobile market, the industry is subject to many uncertainties, and produces only 

 15.000 or 20,000 bushels yearly. 



Florida shows no oyster culture worth mention, but at Savannah an old planting interest 

 flourishes, situated mainly at Vernonburg and at Thunderbolt, but now spreading elsewhere 

 through the salt marshes under a protection of a liberal State law. The seed used is gathered in 

 the neighborhood, by crews of men in bateaus, who at low tide pick it by hand from the " coon 

 bars," or sometimes by tonging in deep water, where oysters lie on the bottom singly or nearly so. 

 Not more than two years' growth is allowed the beds, and all the methods are crude, yet the 

 product, though ill-looking, has a fine taste. 



Save a small amount in North Carolina, no oyster planting is to be met with northward of 

 Savannah until Chesapeake Bay is reached. From Norfolk, Va., to Baltimore, Md. ; in the Dela- 

 ware Bay; on the seaward side of New Jersey; in New York Bay; Great South Bay; Long Island 

 Sound; Rhode Island and southern Massachuetts, however, planting is followed in the most sys- 

 tematic manner, and the product is worth several millions of dollars annually. 



* Yet it was talked about in colonial days, and perhaps tried even in prehistoric times; for, as I have ventured 

 elsewhere to suggest, the oyster-beds in the Sheepscot and George Rivers may have been planted there by the Indians, 

 who carried over from Damariscotta, by paths yet traceable, a quantity of full-grown oysters, and placed them in 

 those streams, in order to keep them alive conveniently near home. If this supposition is correct, it is probably the 

 earliest instance of oyster-culture in North America. 



