255 FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



to-day vast oyster farms are under careful scientific cultivation. The old 

 skiff and tongs have been laid aside and, like the arms of the ancient Romans, 

 are more ornamental than useful. In their places we see the fast well- 

 built steam and power boats with their powerful dredges darting back and 

 forth across the bay, loaded to the water's edge with this delicious sea food. 

 The rapidity with which oysters are now dredged and brought to market 

 necessitates a greater field and a more general consumption. Competition 

 has reached its keenest stage, and the fight for an outlet for the product 

 of this advanced cultivation has resulted in lowering the price of the oyster 

 until to-day it is not a luxury but a staple article of food and will bring only 

 its food value, hence the consumer is benefited by the advance in oyster 

 cultivation as well as the dealer. 



" After the planting, growing, transplanting and maturing, the dredged 

 oysters, carried to market in swift boats, must be sold. Here the inter- 

 esting natural history of the oyster industry ceases; the wonder at the 

 marvelous work of Nature in ' bringing these oysters from a tiny speck of 

 film in the water, through the countless vicissitudes which surround the 

 struggling atom to a well developed, hard-shelled, self-reliant bivalve is over- 

 shadowed by the more important feature from an oysterman's point of view 

 — how can all these oysters be sold, to whom, and for how much? 



" The methods employed in selling and distributing the harvest of 

 these vast under-water farms have progressed in the same proportion as 

 the growth and cultivation and has taken on all the selling features of the 

 largest mercantile establishments of which these methods are characteristic. 

 Advertising in all its far-reaching publicity and persistent drumming by 

 salesmen and solicitation by mail and by wire are among the methods 

 employed. In the city the salesman makes his rounds, and the orders are 

 delivered in the shell by wagon the same day or the next day. Out-of- 

 town orders are mostly opened and shipped in tubs in which a clean pure 

 piece of ice is placed, or in carriers containing a galvanized receptacle for 

 the oysters with the ice packed around solidly on the outside. 



" As yet the conservative old-fashioned oysterman is not ready to grasp 



