FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 1 23 



His own mother, who is after all a little more than a superior sort of sieve 

 for sea water and its microscopic life, will incontinently swallow him if he 

 comes her way. A hapless atom, he. 



* The oyster nursling whisks his way bravely through the sea of 

 troubles. He is now a little two-walled vase of slime, with an exciting 

 stomach and little hair oars to drive him through the water. The wonder 

 is that the undirected young thing knows what to make of himself at all. 

 Scientists are hard put to it to discover wherein he differs from any one of 

 a half dozen other minute sea babies. Nor can their strongest microscopes 

 search out any reason why he should not inadvertently grow up a starfish. 

 But he makes no mistake. He gets his organs proper to a well-bred oyster 

 and builds him a little protecting shell as fast as ever he can. 



"Spared to days of discretion, he prepares to settle down in life. And 

 here a fresh danger besets him. The choice of a bed is a life and death 

 affair. For even now he is but one five-hundredth of an inch in diameter, 

 and rather thinner than a sheet of paper. The merest film of slime upon 

 the shell he fastens to is enough to asphyxiate him, and snuff out his little 

 vital spark. And clean shell surfaces are by no means common in the 

 brackish waters of bays and river mouths. Oyster infants are smothered 

 in their beds each year in myriads. 



"This final peril of his free-swimming youth evaded, a clean founda- 

 tion secured, the little oyster cultivates a placid disposition and hardens his 

 shell. But not in unmolested peace. As a delicacy he is much appreciated 

 by the larger sort of fish, who long to crunch his fragile house walls and 

 feast upon his juicy little body. His only protection lies in formidable 

 armor. He builds upon the native oyster bed, where lime from dissolving 

 shells is to be had for the taking, and adds layer to layer for dear life. 



"But even inside crusted walls of lime he is not safe. The starfish, 

 that flabby innocent called 'devil's fingers,' has a pull which avails much on 

 the oyster beds. It wraps its wicked, suckered rays about the luckless 

 bivalves and patiently pulls until the oyster inside, fairly tired out in the 

 struggle to hold his house together, capitulates and is sucked into the star- 

 fish's greedy stomach. Another enemy, the oyster drill, whose tongue is a 

 rasping file, perforates his thickest shell and eats him out of house and 

 home Sea worms, with the best intentions in the world, twine their stony 

 folds about his valves and incarcerate him to die of slow starvation. Bar- 

 nacles crowd him to death, and in his old age young oysters plant them- 

 selves thick upon his shell and smother him beneath them. Altogether, 

 statisticians say. he has- but one chance in 1,145,000 of reaching a ripe old age. 



"So much for the life of the wild oyster and the losing game he plays. 



