BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
Drill ( Buccinum cinereum), which is present upon our own 
North Shore. This Mollusc does great damage in the United 
States, but little on our oyster-beds. Indeed, as elsewhere 
pointed out, the chief oyster enemies of the United States are 
either absent altogether from our waters, or do but little 
damage — a circumstance of great advantage to future cultur- 
ists. Other indirectly injurious Molluscs are the Squids, which 
destroy large number of herring and other small fish. It will 
of course be evident that an animal may be, at different 
times and in different ways, both beneficial and injurious. 
Is it not remarkable that the first attempt at mollusc-culture 
in Acadian waters was contemporaneous with its first settlement 
in 1604? It was so, though in a rudimentary form. Lescar- 
bot, in describing DeMont’s settlement at St. Oroix Island 
(Dochet Island of to-day), says: “ There is also a little chapel 
built after the fashion of the savages, at the foot of which 
there is such a store of mussels as is wonderful, which may 
be gathered at low tide, but they are small. I believe that 
Monsieur DeMont’s people did not forget to choose and take 
the biggest and left there but the small ones to grow and 
increase.” Thus was one of the axioms of modern mollusc- 
culture observed by the first settlers on the shores of Acadia. 
Nothing more, even of this simple kind, seems to have been 
done until the experiments of Hon. Mr. MacFarlane, in Nova 
Scotia, and Hon. Mr. Pope, in Prince Edward Island, to be 
spoken of in connection with the Oyster. 
The need of mollusc-culture for the present time in Acadia, 
resolves itself into the need of oyster-culture. No other 
Mollusc on our shores is fished to anywhere near its limit of 
natural productiveness, much less beyond it. But as our 
food-molluscs came to be extensively used, as they ultimately 
must, regulations of the fishery should be enforced from 
the first, and not after the supply verges on exhaustion. 
In the case of the Oyster, there is need of immediate and 
vigorous government interference, not only for the protection 
of the present beds, but for the encouragement of the plant- 
ing of new ones. To culturists there must be given not only 
