28 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[January, 
BUYERS SIGNAL 
OYSTER MARKETS 
V..OWMK C>V.V 
OYSTER FARMING AS PRACTISED ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. 
Oysters and Oyster Farming:. 
The oyster is a strange sort of an animal. Chil¬ 
dren, and many grown folks too, when one speaks 
of an animal, think of a cow or a horse, or some 
large creature, because these are the largest and 
most familiar to us. All forms of life belong to 
either plants or animals. A rosebush is a plant, 
ancl a goat is an animal, but it is not always so easy 
to tell to which branch or group of living things 
an object belongs. There are many plants that 
move from place to place by their own action, and 
there are animals that are as much attached to the 
rock or earth upon which they grow as a tree is. 
If the boys and girls should just here ask me to 
tell the difference between an animal and a plant, I 
should be obliged to say, I do not know. I can 
tell a horse from a maple tree, but these arc ex¬ 
treme cases. Most persons can tell the color, red 
from blue, but the red approaches blue through 
many shades, and in the same way the blue shades 
into the red, until one may be sometimes at a loss 
to know where the red ends and the blue begins. 
All this talk is to show you that all animals arc 
not alike in having those things that are common 
with the most perfect and higher forms of animal 
life. The Oyster is an animal without legs, and 
therefore cannot walk ; it has poor eyes and cannot 
therefore enjoy the scenery of the world in which 
it lives. The oyster was never known to stumble 
and fall down stairs, and experience the pain of a 
broken bone, and for very good reasons. The early 
life or childhood of the oyster is now well known. 
It grows or hatches from an egg that is so small 
as to be seen with difficulty. No boy would think 
of carrying oyster eggs to market in a basket, or 
bring them home from an egg hunt in his hat. 
After hatching, the young oyster swims about for a 
time, after which it may be said to “ settle down to 
business,” and attaches itself to some hard object 
where it remains for the rest of its existence. The 
oyster feeds upon the sea water. I take it for 
granted that all the young readers knew that the 
oyster, perhaps most familiar to many as the lead¬ 
ing element of a very excellent soup, is a water 
animal, a “shell fish,” as it is sometimes called. 
The young oyster, at three months—the age when 
human babies have their picture taken now-a-days 
—is not larger than apea; they are not of sufficient 
size for market until in their fourth or fifth year. 
But what is this “ oyster farming ” mentioned in 
the title ? How can an animal that grows in the 
ocean be a farm crop ? Is it possible that oysters are 
planted and cared for in a way that a field of corn 
is grown ? Until recent years an oyster bed—by 
which 1 mean a portion of the bottom of the ocean 
where oysters grow—was considered free property. 
Much as bad boys look upon a melon patch—the 
first come the first served. At present oyster beds 
are owned, and the crop is actually planted and 
grown. There are a great many such cultivated 
oyster beds along the Atlantic Coast. When the 
“ seed” has been planted, as young oysters, in the 
bed, they grow rapidly, that is for such slow 
going animals as oysters, and become plump and 
fat, and in striking contrast to the poor and slender 
oysters that have grown in unfavorable places. 
The oysters are harvested by means of oyster 
tongs. The oyster men go out in small boats 
over the beds and bring the oysters to the surface 
and into the boats. As the oysters come from salt 
water, they are naturally charged or filled with sea 
water, and more or less bitter and unclean. To fit 
them for the table they must be “ floated,” that is 
exposed to fresh or partly fresh water. The 
“floats,” or “drinks,” arc large boat-like struc¬ 
tures, 30 to 40 feet long, 2 feet deep, with openings 
and holes, in which the oysters are placed and are 
washed by the fresh water coming usually from 
the mouth of an inflowing river. After a few days 
the oysters become freshened and are ready for the 
market. Where they afterwards go I will leave for 
the young reader to imagine. To say that the 
oyster figures largely in stews, fries, and other 
foods would not be taken as an untruth. 
The engraving shows something of the oyster 
farming near New York. Two “drinks,” are shown 
in the central picture. The method of catching, 
or grappling, the tools in oyster farming, and a 
market scene occupy the corners. Uncle Hal. 
