290 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
This mode of quieting the appetite for dinner appears to continue to the present 
day. A diet of raw oysters is an excellent remedy for dyspepsia. 
The Pilgrims landing on the shores of what is now Massachusetts found oysters 
in great abundance and used by the Indians, and oysters were served at the first 
Thanksgiving dinner on this continent. The oyster industry of the world is chiefly in 
the United States and Prance. A few natural beds yet remain in Great Britain and 
Prance; the latter country has the best conducted oyster-culture, and seems with 
Holland to monopolize the trade of Europe, especially in oyster seed and the culture 
thereof. 
In the census of 1890 the United States, in a comparative statement, is credited 
with an annual catch of 5,550,000,000 oysters, France 680,400,000, Great Britain 
1,600,000,000, and Canada 22,000,000; the catches of the rest of the countries of the 
world are comparatively small, with Holland and Italy in respective order, the total 
for Europe being 2,331,200,000. The eastern coast of North America produces as 
much as all the rest of the world combined, and this very fact is full of importance to 
us in the consideration of the matter before us. 
About 100 years ago the French and English oyster supply was supposed to be 
inexhaustible, yet it was not long before they were fighting for legislation, just as we 
are doing to-day. The first legislation respecting oysters seems to have been during 
the reign of James I, about 1606. The features of this legislation, cooperated in by 
both countries on account of the contiguity of their oyster-beds in the English Chan- 
nel, and in effect to-day, is largely what we have learned by our own experience, not 
only in the northern waters but in Florida, viz: No dredging, except in private beds; 
a closed season, May 1 to September 1 ; oysters less than 2£ inches thrown back on 
the reefs; no ballast thrown on any oyster-bars. The customs officers are authorized 
to enforce these laws. 
Such are the avarice and cupidity of man that through all these thousands of 
years he has not learned that it is the greatest folly to attempt to live on Nature’s 
bank account without providing some return for the drafts made. All America, and 
Florida especially, with all the experience of the past to profit by, is destroying her 
natural wealth in every direction. 
As before stated, oysters are found along the North American coast all the way 
down to the western end of the Gulf of Mexico. They are apparently much of the 
same nature, but some naturalists claim that the southern oyster is different from 
the northern ; yet both varieties are found not only in Long Island Sound but in the 
Gulf of Mexico, and while growth changes their appearance it is owing to the nature 
of the surroundings — the bottom, the water, and the food. The principal oyster- 
grounds of the world are in the Chesapeake Bay. The abundance with which Nature 
blessed that region may not endure through the next half century without further 
protection by legislation, yet it is likely that there will be at all times public oyster 
grounds in the United States, as in England and France, although any attempt to 
interfere with the so-called rights of fishermen on the oyster-banks has always met 
with strenuous opposition. 
A hundred years ago oysters were plentiful from Maine to the Delaware Gapes, 
and while some few are still found about the northern coast of New England, they are 
not sufficient to make the business profitable in that section. Along the Connecticut 
and Rhode Island coasts and down into Long Island Sound the oyster interests are 
managed in an energetic and systematic manner. New Haven is the pioneer in Euro- 
