 | THE OYSTER. The oyster : |  |
I. THE OYSTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE POSSIBILITIES OF OYSTER CULTURE.
A citizen of Maryland will give the oyster a high
place in the list of our resources. The vast number
of oysters which the Chesapeake Bay has furnished in
the past is ample proof of its fertility, but it is difficult
to give any definite statement as to its value. Statistics,
even in recent years, are scanty and doubtful, and
it is not possible to estimate the number of oysters
which our beds have furnished to our people with any
accuracy, although it may be computed, approximately,
from indirect evidence. The business of
packing oysters for shipment to the interior was established
in Maryland in 1834, and from that date to
quite recent years it has grown steadily and constantly,
and, though small and insignificant at first, it
has kept pace with the development of our country,
the growth of our population, and the improvement
of means for transportation. For fifty-six years the
bay has furnished the oysters to meet this constantly
increasing demand. The middle of this period is the
year 1862, and as the greatest development of the
may be used as an average for the whole period,
with little danger of error through excess. We have
no statistics for 1862, but in 1865 C. S. Maltby made
a very careful computation of the oyster business of
the whole bay for the year. He says there were 1000
boats engaged in dredging and 1500 canoes engaged
in tonging. The dredgers gathered 3,663,125 bushels
of oysters in Maryland and 1,083,209 bushels in Virginia,
while 1,216,375 bushels were tonged in Maryland
and 981,791 bushels in Virginia, or 6,954,500 bushels
in all. About half of these were sent to Baltimore,
and the rest to the following cities in the following
order: Washington, Alexandria, Boston, Fair Haven,
New York, Philadelphia, Seaford, and Salisbury. Of
the 3,465,000 bushels which came to Baltimore, 625,000;
were consumed in the city and its vicinity, while
2,840,000 bushels were shipped to a distance by Baltimore
packers. Ten years later the harvest of oysters
from the bay had increased to 17,000,000 bushels,
and it has continued to increase, year after year, up
to the last few years. We may safely regard the
harvest of 1865 as an approximation to the annual
average for the whole period of fifty-six years, and
other methods of computation give essentially the
same result.
The total harvest of oysters from the Chesapeake
Bay since the establishment of the packing houses is
therefore about 56 times 7,000,000, or 392,000,000
bushels, and the local consumption along the shores
of the bay brings the grand total fully up to four
hundred million bushels.
This inconceivably vast amount of delicate, nutritious
food has been yielded by our waters without
any aid from man. It is a harvest which no man has
sown; a free gift from bounteous nature.
The fact that our waters have withstood this enormous
draft upon them, and have continued for more
than half a century to meet our constantly increasing
demands, is most conclusive evidence of their fertility
and value, and the citizens of Maryland and Virginia
might well point with pride to the boundless resources
of our magnificent bay, were it not for two things.
First of these is the fact, which for many years we
strove to hide even from ourselves, that our indifference
and lack of foresight, and our blind trust in our
natural advantages, have brought this grand inheritance
to the verge of ruin. Unfortunately this is now
so clear that it can no longer be hidden from sight
nor explained away, and every one knows that, proud
as our citizens once were of our birthright in our
oyster-beds, we will be unable to give to our children
any remnant of our patrimony unless the whole oyster
industry is reformed without delay.
We have wasted our inheritance by improvidence
and mismanagement and blind confidence; but even
if our beds had held their own and were to-day as
valuable as they were fifty years ago, this would be no
just ground for satisfaction, in this age of progress, to
a generation which has seen all our other resources
developed and improved.
Four hundred million bushels of oysters is a vast
quantity, and it testifies to the immeasurable value of
our waters; but every one who has studied the subject,
experience of other countries, knows that the harvest
of oysters from our bay has never, even at its best,
made any approach to what it might have been if we
had aided the bounty of nature by human industry and
intelligence. The four hundred million bushels is the
wild crop which has been supplied by nature, without
any aid from man, and it compares with what we might
have obtained from our waters in about the same way
that the nuts and berries which are gathered in our
swamps and forests compare with the harvest from
our cultivated fields and gardens and orchards.
When we have learned to make wise use of our
opportunities, and when the oyster-beds of the bay
have been brought to perfection, a harvest of four
hundred million bushels in half a century will not be
regarded as evidence of fertility.
It will take many years of labor to bring the whole
bay under thorough cultivation, and it will require a
great army of industrious and skillful farmers, and
great sums of money; but the expense and labor will
be much less than an equal area of land above water
requires; and while it may be far away, the time will
surely come when the oyster harvest each year will be
fully equal to the total harvest of the last fifty years,
and it will be obtained without depleting or exhausting
the beds, and without exposing the laborers to
hardships or unusual risk.
This is not the baseless speculation of an idle fancy.
Our opportunities for rearing oysters are unparalleled
in any other part of the world, and in another place I
have shown that, in other countries, much less valuable
at a rate per acre which, on our own great beds,
would carry our annual harvest very far beyond the
sum of all the oysters which have ever been used by
the packers of Maryland and Virginia.
This is capable of proof by the evidence of other
countries, but I wish to show now that it is proved
with equal conclusiveness by the natural history of the
oyster.
The Chesapeake Bay is one of the richest agricultural
regions of the earth, and its fertility can be compared
only with that of the valleys of the Nile and the
Ganges and other great rivers. It owes its fertility to
the very same causes as those which have enabled the
Nile valley to support a dense human population for
untold ages without any loss of fertility; but it is
adapted for producing only one crop, the oyster.
All human food is vegetable in its origin, and
whether we eat plants and their products directly, or
use beef, mutton, pork, fowls or eggs as food, it all
carries us back to the vegetable kingdom; for if there
were no plants, all animals would starve at once.
Every one knows that this is absolutely true of all terrestrial
animals, and all naturalists know that it is
equally true of sea-food. The blue-fish preys on
smaller fishes; many of these on still smaller ones;
these in their turn upon minute crustacea; these upon
still smaller animals; and these pasture on the microscopic
plants which swarm at the surface of the ocean.
However long the chain may be, all animals, those of
the water as well as those of the land, depend on plants
for food, although most of the vegetable life of the
only to naturalists.
If there were no plants all animals would starve, and
no animal is a direct food-producer, for it can furnish
nothing except what it has got from plants.
Now, for the purposes of animal life a small plant is
as effective as a large one, for however small it may
be, it still has the power, which is possessed by no
animal, to gather up the inorganic matter of the earth,
and to turn it into vegetable matter fit for the nourishment
of animals. Microscopic plants can do this work
as well as great forests of lofty trees, provided they
are numerous enough, and size counts for nothing.
Every one knows that the sea is rich in animal life;
that it contains great banks covered with cod and haddock,
miles and miles of water crowded full of mackerel
and herring, and great monsters of the deep such
as the whales and sharks. To the superficial observer
the vegetation of the sea appears to be very scanty,
and, except for the fringe of sea-weeds along the shore,
the great ocean seems, so far as plant life is concerned,
to be a barren desert. If it be true that all animals
depend on plants for their food, the vegetation of the
ocean seems totally inadequate for the support of its
animal life.
The microscope shows that its surface swarms with
minute plants, most of them of strange forms, totally
unlike any which are familiar, and having nothing in
common with the well known trees and herbs and
grasses of the land except the power to change inorganic
matter into food which is fit for animals.
Most of these plants are so small that they are absolutely
are gathered together in a mass, it looks like slimy
discolored water and presents no traces of structure.
They seem too insignificant to play any important
part in the economy of nature, but the great monsters
of the deep, beside which the elephant and the ox and
the elk are small animals, owe their existence to these
microscopic plants.
Their vegetative power is wonderful past all expression.
Among land plants, corn, which yields seed
about a hundredfold in a single season, is the emblem
of fertility, but it can be shown that a single marine
plant, very much smaller than a grain of mustard seed,
would fill the whole ocean solid in less than a week,
if all its descendants were to live.
This stupendous fact is almost incredible, but it is
capable of rigorous demonstration, and it must be
clearly grasped before we can understand the life of
the ocean. As countless minute animals are constantly
pasturing upon them, the multiplication of
these plants is kept in check, but in calm weather it is
no rare thing to find great tracts of water many miles
in extent packed so full of them that the whole surface
is converted into a slimy mass, which breaks the waves
and smooths the surface like oil. The so-called "black
water" of the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, the home
and feeding ground of the whale, has been shown by
microscopic examination to consist of a mass of these
plants crowded together until the whole ocean is discolored
by them. Through these seas of "black
water" roam the right whales, the largest animals on
earth, gulping at each mouthful hundreds of gallons
plants.
In tropical seas, ships sometimes sail for days through
great floating islands of this surface vegetation, and
the Red Sea owes its name to the coloration of its
water by great swarms of microscopic plants which are
of a reddish tinge. The plant life of the ocean is
ample for the support of all its animal life, just as the
vegetation of the land gives a maintenance to all terrestrial
animals.
The source of the food of animals is the vegetable
world. What is the source of the food of plants?
Most of it consists of mineral matter, derived from
the crust of the earth; but before this can be used by
plants it must be dissolved in water. The solid rocks
cannot maintain life until they have been ground down
and dissolved, and in the form of frost and rain, water
is continually breaking down and wearing away the
hard rocks, and carrying the fragments down to lower
levels to form the fertile land of the hillsides and
valleys and meadows. As the roots of the plants
penetrate this loose material they gather up the mineral
food which is dissolved by the rain and convert it into
their own substance, and as their leaves fall and their
trunks decay, the decaying vegetable matter gradually
builds up the leaf-mould and meadow-loam which are
so well adapted for supporting vegetable life. Each
year, however, the heavy rains wash great quantities
of this light, rich soil into the rivers, which in times of
flood cut into their banks and carry the arable land,
which has been built up so slowly, down to lower
levels, until at last it finds its way to the ocean and is
lost, so far as its use to man is concerned.
In a long, flat river-valley it may be arrested for a
time, so that man may make use of it, but its final
destination is the ocean, and as this has already been
enriched by the washings through untold ages, all
that is most valuable for the support of life is now dissolved
in its waters, or deposited upon its bottom,
where man can make no use of it.
We love to dream of the shipwrecked treasures
which lie among the bones of the sailors on the sea-bottom;
of the galleons sunk and lost with their precious
cargoes of bullion and jewels from the treasure-chambers
of the Incas and the palaces of Asia; but
all these, and all the "gems of purest ray serene, the
dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear": all the thousands
of tons of gold and silver which, as chemists tell
us, the sea holds dissolved in its water,—all these are
as nothing when compared with these precious washings
from the land of all that fits it for supporting life.
Man will some time assert his dominion over the
fishes of the sea, and will learn to send out flocks and
herds of domesticated marine animals to pasture and
fatten upon the vegetable life of the ocean and to
make its vast wealth of food available, but at present
we are able to do little more than to snatch a slight
tribute from the stream of nutritive material which is
flowing down into the ocean, as it comes to temporary
rest in the valleys of our great rivers.
Every one knows the part which these great river-valleys
have played in human civilization. In the
valley of the Nile, of the Tigris, and of the Ganges
we find the most dense populations; here were the
great cities of the past; here agriculture and architecture
had their birth.
We owe to the great river-valleys, where the natural
fertility of the soil has lightened the struggle for
bread and has afforded leisure for higher matters, all
that is most distinctive of civilized man.
The Chesapeake Bay is a great river-valley; not as
large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but of enough consequence
to play an important part in human affairs,
and to support in comfort and prosperity a population
as great as that of many famous states. It receives
the drainage of a vast area of fertile land stretching
over the meadows and hillsides of nearly one-third of
New York, and nearly all of the great agricultural states
of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. The most
valuable part of the soil of this great tract of farming
land, more than forty million acres in area, ultimately
finds its way to the bay, in whose quiet waters it
makes a long halt on its journey to the ocean, and it
is deposited, all over the bay, in the form of fine, light,
black sediment, known as oyster-mud.
This is just as valuable to man, and just as fit to
nourish plants, as the mud which settles every year on
the wheat fields and rice fields of Egypt. It is a
natural fertilizer of inestimable importance, and it is so
rich in organic matter that it putrefies in a few hours
when exposed to the sun. In the shallow waters of
the bay, under the influence of the warm sunlight, it
produces a most luxuriant vegetation; but with few
exceptions, the plants which grow upon it are microscopic
and invisible, and their very existence is unknown
to all except a few naturalists. They are not
while they are found in great abundance on the surface
of the mud, they are not restricted to it, for their food is
diffused in solution through the whole body of water,
and the mud itself is so light that it is in a state of
semi-suspension, and the little plants have ample
room among its particles.
On land, the plant-producing area is a surface, but
the total plant-producing acreage of the bay is many
times greater than the superficial area of its bottom.
As the little plants are bathed on all sides by food,
they do not have to go through the slow process of
sucking it up through roots and stems, and they grow
and multiply at a rate which has no parallel in ordinary
familiar plants; and they would quickly choke up
the whole bay if they were not held in check; but
their excessive increase is prevented by countless
minute animals which feast upon them and turn the
plant substance into animal matter, to become in their
turn food for larger animals. As a matter of fact, they
are not very abundant, but there is no difficulty in
finding them in any part of the bay, by straining the
water through a fine cloth. In this way we obtain a
fine sediment, which is shown by the microscope to
consist almost entirely of them.
The variety of these microscopic plants and animals
is very great, and a series of big volumes would be
needed to describe the microscopic flora and fauna of
the bay. Most of them occur in other waters as well,
but many are peculiar to the bay, which is an exceptionally
favored spot for their growth.
The exploration of this invisible world with a
but at first sight it seems to have no particular bearing
on human life. The ability to turn inorganic mineral
matter into food for animals and for man does not
depend on size, and in this work the microscopic flora
of the bay is as efficient as corn or potatoes, but infinitely
more active and energetic.
In the oyster we have an animal, most nutritious
and palatable, especially adapted for living in the
soft mud of bays and estuaries, and for gathering up
the microscopic inhabitants and turning them into
food for man.
The fitness of the oyster for this peculiar work—for
bringing back to us the mineral wealth which the
rivers steal from our hillsides and meadows—is so
complete and admirable, so marvellous and instructive,
that it cannot be comprehended in its complete
significance, without a thorough knowledge of the
anatomy and embryology of the oyster.
This book is not a scientific treatise; its purpose is
practical, and it will aim at the treatment of its subject
in its relations to practical ends; but we cannot
fully appreciate the great possibilities of our bay
without something more than the vague and erroneous
notions regarding the nature of the oyster
which are generally current.
The inestimable value of our inheritance in the
black mud of the bay has been pointed out, and it
now remains to show that the oyster is an animal
which has been especially evolved for life in this mud,
and that through its aid we may make our inheritance
available. A thorough knowledge of the oyster will
of the oyster for cultivation, and it will also show why
its cultivation is necessary, and why our resources
can never be fully developed by oysters in a state of
nature. We have never enjoyed the hundredth part
of our advantage, nor can we ever do so if we continue
to rely upon nature alone; and this fact, which has
been proved again and again by statistics, is perfectly
clear to any one who knows what an oyster is, and
what are its relations to the world around it. As its
world is chiefly microscopic, no one can penetrate into
the secrets of its structure and history without training
in the technical methods of the laboratory; and business
contact with the oyster cannot possibly, with any
amount of experience, give any real insight into its
habits and mode of life.
I speak on this subject with the diffidence of one
who has been frequently snubbed and repressed; for
while I am myself sure of the errors of the man who
tonged oysters long before I was born, and who loudly
asserts his right to know all about it, it is easier to
acquiesce than to struggle against such overwhelming
ignorance, so I have learned to be submissive in the
presence of the elderly gentleman who studied the
embryology of the oyster when years ago as a boy he
visited his grandfather on the Eastern Shore, and to
listen with deference to the shucker as he demonstrates
to me at his raw-box, by the aid of his hammer and
shucking-knife, the fallacy of my notions of the structure
of the animal.
Still I may be permitted to state that I am not
totally without experience. I have dredged oysters
Bodkin, to Craney Island and Lynn Haven. I have
tonged oysters in five different States; and in the
warm waters of the South, where frost is unknown
and the oysters flourish above low-tide mark, I have
enjoyed the opportunity to explore the natural beds,
and have spent months, under the broiling tropical sun,
wading over the sharp shells which cut the feet like
knives, studying the oysters at home. I have planted
oysters; I have reared them by collecting the floating
spat; and I have hatched from artificially fertilized
eggs more oysters than the number of people in the
last census; and I boldly claim enough practical
experience to acquit me from the charge that my
views are theoretical.
| THE OYSTER. The oyster : | |