858 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



four to ten years old. " It is not difficult to 

 find white oaks under eighteen inches high 

 that are twenty or more years old, and then 

 this may be the second, third, or fourth 

 sprout that has followed in succession, so 

 that it is not improbable that in some of the 

 cases seen the parent root or grub was from 

 sixty to one hundred years old ; and the 

 whole now not an inch in diameter anywhere 

 above the ground. Then what shall we say 

 of the age of some grubs that weigh from 

 thirty to fifty pounds each ? " Pines and hem- 

 locks will not grow from stumps, but the 

 seeds have a vitality corresponding to that 

 of the deciduous " grubs," In the cone they 

 may be preserved with hardly impaired in- 

 tegrity for five or six years ; and cones of 

 Pinus Banksiana have been seen, unopened 

 and apparently perfect, that were ten or 

 fifteen years old. " I feel confident," Prof. 

 Beal says, " that, in an hour or two spent in 

 a certain favorable place, I could fully satisfy 

 any intelligent person, unless he be unusu- 

 ally stubborn, that it is an easy matter to 

 prove that new forests spring from seeds or 

 the stumps of the old, and that, when the 

 second growth is in some respects unlike 

 the first, the change is accounted for in a 

 rational manner." 



The Oyster-Garden of Arcachon.— The 



great oyster-garden at Arcachon, France, is 

 a basin on the Bay of Biscay, connected with 

 the Atlantic only by a very narrow opening, 

 and is sixty-eight miles in circumference and 

 protected from winds by the pine-clad heights 

 that surround it. The waters are salt enough 

 and yet not too strong, the bottom is of 

 the gravelly sand favorable to oyster-breed- 

 ing, and the rise and fall of the tide are 

 such that the basin is completely covered at 

 high tide and the beds are largely uncovered 

 at low water. The oyster has always been 

 an inhabitant of this spot. The stock had 

 become nearly exhausted forty years ago, 

 but has been recruited by individual enter- 

 prise under the encouragement of the Gov- 

 ernment. There are now 12,500 acres of 

 oyster-beds in the basin. Several thousand 

 men and women are employed to attend 

 them, and the average annual sale of oysters 

 by the principal firm is over 200,000,000. 

 As the majority are not sold under two years 

 old, and these only for relaying, it is com- 



puted that there are usually 500,000,000 

 oysters of various ages upon these beds. 

 The beds having been artificially made, the 

 whole process of oyster-breeding can be wit- 

 nessed there. They are laid out in parks, each 

 park embracing twenty or more beds, and be- 

 tween the parks, as between the sections of 

 the beds, are water- ways for the passage of 

 boats. The beds are made of sand and 

 gravel, upon foundations of wooden piles, 

 and raised above the level of the basin bot- 

 tom, but not to such an extent as to expose 

 them at other than low tides. A barrier of 

 " switches " or nets protects the beds from 

 fishes. Sets of earthenware tiles are arranged 

 for the reception of the young oysters or 

 " spat," coated with mortar, so that anything 

 fixing itself to them may be scraped off 

 easily. Sometimes each of these tiles will 

 be covered by five hundred or six hundred 

 young oysters. They develop rapidly, and 

 in about a month take the form of real min- 

 iature oysters. Then they need more room, 

 and are thinned by scraping, to be placed 

 wider apart on other tiles, or to be trans- 

 ferred to their final beds, or to wire-bottomed 

 trays. 



A Navajo Tanner. — Dr. Shufeldt has suc- 

 ceeded in witnessing the complete process of 

 tanning a buckskin by a Navajo Indian. He 

 had difficulty in inducing the tanner to bring 

 his work where it could all be performed 

 before his eyes, because of a superstition 

 that the hide must be removed on the spot 

 where the animal is slain, or the hunter will 

 lose his eye-sight before the next moon. The 

 present hunter, however, perhaps tried to 

 avoid this doom by beginning some of the 

 preliminaries of his work before removing 

 the animal. The skin was taken off with 

 great dexterity in manipulation, and laid in 

 a hole dug in the ground and filled with 

 spring-water till the next morning. It was 

 then taken out, washed, cleansed with a 

 knife, and dipped in clean water. The tools 

 for shaving off the hair were obtained from 

 the animal itself, being parts of the bones 

 of the fore-leg. The skull of the deer, which 

 had been kept through the night in the ashes 

 of a low camp-fire, was split, and the brains 

 were taken out. They were then manipu- 

 lated in a basin of tepid water for the re- 

 moval of splinters of bone, and left to sim- 



