THE GREEN-GILLED OYSTER APPEARS 
135 
Among other things it says, “Schools, 
private and public, anywhere within 
fifty miles have come to lean on him 
and a visit to his place is a first step 
toward interesting children in the seri- 
ous study of nature, which he believes 
to he the foundation of all real knowl- 
edge.” 
This should he a thought to be fos- 
tered in the hearts of the parents of 
our school children. Advantage should 
be taken of the splendid opportunities 
for nature study within our boundaries. 
The Green-Gilled Oyster Appears. 
The oyster-lovers of Washington, 
Philadelphia, and other coast cities 
have been enjoying during the past few 
weeks a delicacy of which few house- 
wives have been entirely aware. This 
is the green-gilled oyster, widely famed 
in France as the delicately flavored 
Marennes oyster. There the bivalve is 
cultivated in special “claires” or small 
artificial tide-water ponds in which the 
oysters’ gills become bright green in 
color. There is a great demand for such 
green-gills at Marennes and at many 
of the famous French watering places 
because of their fine flavor and unusual 
“fatness.” And the price paid for green- 
gilled oysters is considerably higher 
than that paid for normal “white” 
oysters. 
While the oyster farmer of Marennes 
goes to some trouble to obtain the 
green coloration of the gills, the Ameri- 
can oyster farmers of certain parts of 
the Chesapeaks Bay and North Carolina 
Sound regions have occasionally been 
granted by nature the privilege, gen- 
erally much against their wills, of rear- 
ing green-gilled oysters when they 
would have been better satisfied with 
the ordinary American “white” oyster. 
The only objections the American 
oyster culturists have, however, to the 
emerald-edged bivalve are the facts 
that the American public does not 
know its qualities and that nature does 
not bring about conditions each year 
for its regular natural production. 
The greening of the breathing appa- 
ratus of the oyster is caused by a 
vegetable pigment characteristic ap- 
parently of a single microscopic plant, 
a diatom. The rate of growth and re- 
production of this particular diatom is 
governed by very delicate changes in 
the chemical constitution of the sea 
water in which it lives. The oyster 
ingests a large number of diatoms of 
many different species in its normal 
feeding process, having no special 
choice of the kinds it eats. So when 
the particular diatom whose pigment 
causes the greening is very abundant it 
naturally feeds freely on that also. — 
New York Evening Post. 
Greening of Oysters. 
BY J. S. GUTSELL, BUREAU OF FISHERIES, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
This pigment, absorbed by the blood, 
is conveyed to the gills, where certain 
wandering secretory cells reabsorb it, 
take on a greenish tint and so color the 
gills. 
It is supposed that these cells ulti- 
mately disintegrate with the production 
of mucus which is discharged on the 
surface of the gills. Doubtless, also, 
following the disintegration, the pig- 
ment finds its way out of the gills, 
which in this case would function in 
the discharge of a waste substance, in 
addition to serving, like the lungs of 
higher animals, for the interchange of 
respiratory gases. 
Unarmed and Unafraid. 
A Hymn of Peace. 
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 
CALIF. 
O thou blest land. America ! 
I look adown thy country side, 
And in the dawning glow of Peace, 
I see thy landscape glorified. 
Thy forests loftier rear their crests, 
Thine eager rivers swifter flow, 
While from thy hills of Hope and Faith, 
Thy cleansing winds of Freedom blow. 
The Future beckons — May it be ! 
The land where every dream comes true 
The land in which each humblest child 
Shall breathe as free as I or you. 
The favored land of noble youth 
The land where Hatred dies away 
The land where each may know the truth, 
The chosen land of Liberty. 
Erect, unarmed and unafraid 
Its children of the future stand 
With Peace, her sheltering pinions spread 
North, South, East, West, above our lands. 
O speed the day when blood of man 
No more incarnadines the sod, 
When men in brotherhood shall stand 
With every child a son of God. 
When Peace with velvet-sandalled feet 
Shall tread the land from shore to shore, 
And peoples in the bond of love 
Shall never learn war any more. 
