1 3 8 
AMERICAN FISHES. 
It is claimed by oyster-planters that the Drum is very destructive to the 
oyster-beds. Mr. Stearns writes : “ Oysters are their favorite food on the 
Gulf coast, and they destroyed a great many at Apalachicola, St. Andrews, 
Mobile, and Galveston Bays. The Mobile oyster-planters attribute the 
bulk of their losses to Drums. At Pensacola I have known a boat-load of 
oysters, fifty barrels, that were thrown overboard to be preserved, to be 
entirely consumed in eight or ten days by them, leaving but a heap of 
broken shells.” 
While it is probable that the Drum feeds upon oysters as well as upon 
crabs or shrimps, it is probable that the extent of their destructiveness has 
been somewhat exaggerated ; for instance, it was claimed a few years ago 
that oysters in New York Bay to the value of hundreds of thousands of 
dollars were destroyed by Drums. This seems quite unlikely, since the 
Drum is by no means a common fish so far north as New York. 
Concerning its relation to the oyster-culturist, I cannot do better than 
to quote the words of Mr. Ernest Ingersoll : 
“ Knowing the carnivorous propensity of the fish, one can easily imagine 
how an inroad of such a host must affect an oyster-ground. They do not 
seem to make any trouble, however, north of New York City, and rarely 
along the south side of Long Island. At Staten Island and Keyport they 
come in every few years and devastate thousands of dollars worth of 
property. Such a memorable visitation happened about 1850, in July. 
The following summer the planters in Prince’s Bay, fearing a repetition of 
the onslaught, anchored shingles and pieces of waste tin on their beds, 
scattering them at short intervals, in the hope that their dancing, glitter¬ 
ing surfaces might act as ‘ scare-crows ’ to frighten the fish away. Whether 
as an effect of this, or because of a general absence, no more Drums ap¬ 
peared. In New York Bay, off Caven Point, where the old ‘ Black Tom 
Reef’ is now converted into an island, one planter of Keyport lost his 
whole summer’s work—material and labor—in a single September week, 
through an attack by Drums. A City Island planter reported to me a loss 
of $10,000 in one season a few years ago ; but the East River is about the 
northern limit of the Drums, at least as a nuisance to oyster-culture, so far 
as I can learn. The vexation of it is, too, that the Drum does not seem 
to eat half of what he destroys; but, on the contrary, a great school of 
them will go over a bed, wantonly crushing hundreds of oysters and drop¬ 
ping them untasted, but in fragments, on the bottom.” 
The size of the schools in which they go is shown by the following 
records from contemporary newspapers : “ On Monday last, John Earle 
and sons caught, at one draught, in Bristol Ferry, 719 Drum-fish, weigh- 
