122 ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



presumed, has substantially added to their bank balances. The public has 

 been not less blessed in the retention, at a reasonable cost, of this inimitable 

 food supply and, to sum up the situation, " an oyster famine has been 

 averted." 



As this article makes no pretention to being a scientific treatise, the 

 writer is of the opinion that the following bright little sketch concerning 

 the perils of a young oyster which appeared in the columns of the Philadel- 

 phia Public Ledger, may not be deemed inappropriate. 



Perils of a Young Oyster. 



Popular fallacy sets down the oyster as the emblem of crass witless- 

 ness and lumpish unprogression. Now, by rights, the wild oyster — for all 

 his outward plainness — is the most picturesque of all the monsters of the 

 deep. Not from the chafing-dish standpoint alone is he a thing of interest. 

 His career reads like a striking romance. Of all the wild oysters the most 

 picturesque is the American. Challenge, if you will, the imputation of 

 nationality to shellfish; the American oyster is none the less the personifi- 

 cation of Yankee- Doodle ism. His declaration of independence is made as 

 soon as — I had almost said before — he is born. The effete European oyster • 

 ling lies coddled within the mantle of its mother until it is of visible size 

 and can sport a rudimentary shell of its own. But the American, mark 

 you, deserts its happy home for open ocean while it is yet not so much as 

 a finished egg, a mere unfertilized possibility of an oyster. 



" Fate willing, it meets in the sea the vitalizing principle and develops 

 with startling rapidity into a dancing slimedrop, with distinct views of its 

 own. But fate oftenest turns down her inexorable thumb, and the rash egg- 

 let ceases to be a possibility at all. Were it not for this wasteful provision 

 of nature, in a few seasons the wet sea would become as the dry land. For 

 as the ordinarily provident oyster parent presents the world yearly with 

 some 16,000,000 of eggs, the best of them achieving a record of 60,000,000, 

 it takes but little figuring to show that if all the offspring survived the fourth 

 generation of oysters would brim the ocean beds full. 



' To avert this calamity nature makes life lively and strenuous for the 

 young oyster. Most friendless of all the youngsters of the earth, he is an 

 infant Ishmael from the very egg. Sudden chills strike through the unkindly 

 sea and threaten his tender life. A cold rain sends thousands of luckless 

 oyster babes to an untimely grave. Great mouths gape wide to devour 

 him; any big, idle fish, sailing careless, open-mawed, may gulp down mil- 

 lions of his kind and thereafter go home with a keen appetite for breakfast. 



