ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 57 
NOTES ON THE, BREEDING, FOOD AND CAUSE OF 
THE GRAEN COLOR (OF THE OYSTER. 
BY JOHN’ A. RYDER. 
No mollusk known to naturalists, it appears, is consumed in 
such vast quantities as our native oyster, the Ostrea virginiana ot 
systematic writers, hence the great economic importance and the 
scientific interest which it has recently awakened. It is much 
superior in flavor, size, and vigor of growth to the native oyster 
of Europe, and is simulated and approached only by one old 
continental form which I have seen and which is probably the 
Ostrea rostralts of Lamarck. The first attempt made in the arti- 
ficial impregnation of the eggs of this noble mollusk was suc- 
cessful in the hands of our countryman, Professor W. K. Brooks, 
of Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore, who, in 1880, pub- 
lished a remarkable memoir on the subject in the annual report 
of Major T. B. Ferguson, one of the Fish Commissioners of 
Maryland. Professor Brooks’ triumph was, however, not as 
complete as might have been desired, since his investigations 
have not yet enabled us to propagate the oyster by purely ar- 
tificial methods, but his success was so much beyond what was 
attained by Dr. Davaine in his attempts at the artificial fertiliza- 
tion of the ova of the European oyster in 1851, that Brooks’ 
achievement marks the most important era in the history of 
the subject. Others, as well as the writer, have repeated his 
experiments with more or less success, and the latter has been 
enabled to work out a portion of the developmental history of 
Mya arenaria, the common clam, “soft clam,” “long clam” of 
the North, or “ mananose,’’as it is called further South, from 
artificially impregnated eggs. 
An earnest, and it is to be hoped, successful effort, is being 
made by the United States and Maryland Fish Commissions to 
introduce the most approved French methods into the waters 
of Maryland, and to supplement these by even more advanced 
processes, if practicable. The results of the observations and 
experiments of the writer during the last two years have been 
embodied, in part, in a report to the Maryland Commissioner, 
