Fishery Board for Scotland. 
sinners of Fisheries of the State of New York reported to the The results 
Legislature that 'the security of tenure afforded by the Act ofj^^Y 0 ^ 
' 1 S87, known as the Oyster Franchise Law, bids fair to make this 
' State one of the greatest oyster-producing States on this continent. 
' Already it is estimated that ten times the amount of land is being 
' cultivated that was occupied ten years ago, and the rapidly in- 
' creasing demand warrants the belief that the growth of the 
' business will be even greater during the next ten years. In fact, 
' there can be no doubt that the depletion and exhaustion of the 
' great natural oyster beds of Chesapeake Bay will ultimately 
' compel the artificial cultivation of every available acre of land 
' under water in New York State/ In 1887 the Commissioners 
fixed the price of the land already in cultivation at 50 cents the 
acre, and decided that new land should be sold by auction at not 
less than a dollar per acre. The annual tax is 6 cents an acre. 
As regards the area which may be embraced in a single lease, the 
limit allowed by law is 250 acres ; but many applicants are con- 
tent with an allotment of from one to three acres, from which it is 
found that a single fisherman can make a very decent living. 
Professor Ryder, who was formerly connected with the Fish The Method 
Commission, and is now Professor of Embryology in the University J^X^or by 
of Pennsylvania, and who has been working on the oyster Ryder, 
question for about ten years, recently published a pamphlet em- 
bodying the results of his experiments. \ The practical man,' he 
says, 1 has no time to waste upon the anatomy or development of 
' the animal. "What he wants to know is not how the egg of the 
' oyster segments and develops, but what the habits of the minute 
* creature are when it is first let loose in what must seem to it, if 
' conscious, a truly vast universe of w T ater. Moving about in its 
' element with the help of the fine cilia encircling its velum, it 
' swims until it finally meets with a nidus to which it can glue itself 
4 fast with the margin of the left lobe of its tiny mantle. Once 
1 fixed, its wandering existence is for ever at an end. It is now ready, 
1 by slow stages of growth, to become more and more like its 
' parent.' What is needed is a study of the habits of the animal, 
and then to create the necessary favourable conditions by artificial 
means for its growth towards maturity. In his view the method 
adopted at Long Island Sound might be greatly improved by a 
more scientific method of providing the spatting surface than is 
obtained by scattering the cultch, such as tiles and slates, at the 
bottom of the sea, and allowing the embryos to become diffused 
through an enormous body of water. 
He proposes to place, in a pond or other enclosed area, say 40 
feet square, 100 bushels of spawning oysters, which at the rate of 
50 females per bushel, a very low estimate, ought to yield 100 to 
200 billions of fry. From the pond the water flows into the sea by 
a series of zig-zag canals ?>\ feet wide, in which a system of 
collectors is suspended, 400 in number, consisting essentially of 
flat baskets having the bottoms and ends formed of galvanised iron 
netting, with a mesh of 1 inch to \\ inches, filled with clean 
oyster or clam shells as cultch for the spat. During the rise and 
fall of the tide the water will have to pass through them four times 
a day, aud as the water is thoroughly charged with embryos the 
