Hi OTHER CAKNIVOKOUS FISHES. 



etition of the onslaught, anchored shingles and pieces of waste tin on their, 

 beds, scattering them at short intervals, in the hope that their dancing, 

 glittering surfaces might act as " scarecrows " to frighten the fish away. 

 Whether as an effect of this, or because of a general absence, no more 

 drums appeared. In New York Bay, off Caven Point, where the old 

 "Black Tom Reef" is now converted into an island, one planter of Key- 

 port lost his whole summer's work, material and labor, in a single Sep- 

 tember week, through an attack by drums. A City Island planter report- 

 ed to me a loss of $10,000 in one season a few years ago; but the East 

 River is about the northern limit of the drums, at least as a nuisance to 

 oyster culture, so far as I can learn.. The vexation of it is, too, that the 

 drum does not seem to eat half of what he destroys ; on the contrary, 

 a great school of them will go over a bed, wantonly crushing hun- 

 dreds of oysters and dropping them untasted, but in fragments, on the 

 bottom. 



In return, the drum is itself edible, though of rather poor quality. It 

 is seen in market between July and October. According to tradition 

 only ten species of fish were known to the Dutch when they discovered 

 America. When they caught the shad they named it elft (eleventh) ; the 

 bass twalft (twelfth); and the drum, dertienen (thirteenth). Our name, 

 however, owes its origin to the strange, hollow, roaring noise the fish 

 makes in the water, like the roll of a muffled drum. 



When drums are absent, various other carnivorous fishes prey upon 

 young oysters, such as the tautog, sheep's-head, toad-fish, members of the 

 cod family (when any of them get near a bed, which at present is seldom), 

 and the skates. Of all this vermin the sting-ray or "stingaree" of the 

 fishermen (including several sorts of Dyiastes) is the chief. He is always 

 present and steadily at work along the whole coast. Lying flat on the 

 bottom, he works his triangular flippers until he has washed away the 

 sand from about the oyster he wishes to seize, if it is at all concealed, and, 

 then crushes it between his powerful jaws. Even clams do not escape, 

 his sagacity in capture and strength of mastication, but are devoured in 

 great numbers. A dredge can hardly be hauled between New Jersey and 

 Cape Cod without bringing up one or more of these enemies of the hard- 

 working oysterman. 



A small but numerous and persistent enemy of the oyster is the 

 "drill" or "borer." Under this name is included, however, a numerous 

 class of univalve mollusks, which are carnivorous in their tastes, and 

 armed with a tongue-ribbon, so shaped and so well supplied with flinty, 

 teeth that by means of it they can file a round hole through an oyster's 



