THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 157 
Northern fishery, but I have not time to quote them in detail. 
Rhode Island offers perhaps the most instructive instance. In 
1865 there was only some 60 or 70 acres of bottom under culti- 
vation. The product was only some 71,000 bushels. The price 
was $1.75 per gallon. 
In that year the law was passed which gave individual and 
proprietary rights to oyster ground, and an advance began which 
has never since been checked. In 1883, 11,000 acres were under 
cultivation; the product was in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 
bushels, and the price per gallon had fallen to less thana dollar. 
The fishery in Connecticut will be, I understand, the subject 
of a subsequent paper by a member of the Association, and I will 
not therefore do more than touch upon it. It will suffice for my 
purpose to state that since the operation of the law giving pro- 
prietary interest in defined tracts of bottom, an enormous area 
of what was entirely barren ground has been turned into pro- 
ductive oyster beds, and the crop of native oysters increased 
from insignificance to millions of bushels. Indeed, so great has 
been the success and so encouraging the prospect, that the most 
prominent planter in the State has said that the Connecticut 
people could easily afford a subsidy of $50,000 per annum to 
keep in existence the present Chesapeake policy. 
These facts appear so overwhelmingly conclusive that it is a 
matter of astonishment that the course indicated by them has 
not been immediately adopted. Yet, though it has been urged 
with great persistency for several years, advocates and adherents 
have gathered but very slowly. The most important work to be 
done is, therefore, that of proselyting. But to accomplish this, 
methods differing from the usual ones must be adopted. 
Experience shows that the class which it is desirable to con- 
vert cannot be reached by mere arguments, no matter how sound 
the postulates upon which they are based may be. It is useless 
to apply reason to prejudice. Only actual, tangible evidence . 
can have any effect; and such evidence can only be given by 
what is practically a system of ‘object lessons.’’ An excellent 
illustration of the value of such examples is given by the success 
of oyster-culture in France. There the individual oyster-cultur- 
ist has been educated by the observation of the model govern- 
