The true Cherrystone, in fine condition, retains its shape when cooked, (which is that of a cherry seed,) and cuts as finely as a tender sirloin.

Propagation. The art of breeding the oyster crop, by artificial means, is still in a primitive state in this country. In France, where labor is cheap and abundant, the cultivation of the oyster crop has been carried to the same perfection that has been attained in pisciculture. There the beds are as methodically marked out as for a flower garden, and a close calculation is made as to the greatest profitable produce from a given number of plants. As a portion of the crop becomes sufficiently matured for market, it is gathered, and other plants are at once put in the place. In the Chesapeake the plants are shoveled from the deck of the vessel as she is towed slowly over the space marked out, and the quantity is consequently indefinite. The design is, however, to cover the bottom with a single layer of the plants. The water on artificial beds varies in depth from two to twelve feet, three to four feet being most desirable, as the beds may then be inspected from the surface, when the water is clear and tranquil. Such a depth, too, is most favorable for forking and tonging, and the entire crop may be gathered at one time.

Until a comparatively recent period the oyster was regarded as hermaphrodite, but the sexes are so marked that those familiar with them can readily distinguish them at sight, the females being in excess of the males. During the breeding season the oyster is said to be "in the milk," which term is applied to the ova, or spawn. The spawn is discharged in minute, viscid balls, of such gravity that they float midway between surface and bottom in the water, and are there met by the sperm of the male, which is discharged at the same time. Fertilization is thus effected in the water, and the ova adhere to the first hard or rough substance with which they come in contact, and at once begin to assume shape, and to exhibit indications of life. The spat at first appears to belong to the vegetable rather than to the animal kingdom; but, as it continues to grow in size, the animal assumes a more vigorous and decided character. In a few weeks it is capable of a feeble, independent motion that gradually increases until the shells are perfectly formed, when it attains the power to open and close them.

The object to which the floating spawn is most likely to fasten is the shell of another old oyster, and this accounts for the fact that, while single oysters only are found in the artificial beds, they exist in clusters in the natural beds (Figure 7.)

The spawn gradually changes its rotund shape, and spreads upon the substance to which it adheres, forming a white spot that in time assumes the appearance of a thin, flat shell, though it remains soft and friable. It is now called a spat, and is covered by a delicate skin that grows thicker and harder until it becomes a shell. The spat is much sought after by fishes, crabs, and turtles, and numbers are thus destroyed. The shell begins to harden when the spat attains half an inch to an inch in diameter, and thickens with the growth of the oyster. At one year old it is an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, and its shell is sufliciently hard to place it out of danger from most of its enemies. It may now be used as a plant, though greater size and more age are desirable for stocking artificial beds.

Although ranked by naturalists in a very low scale of animal existence, the oyster is not without certain physical power, and sufficient instinct for self-preservation under ordinary circumstances, as illustrated in instances where the floating spawn has attached to the inside of the shell of an old oyster while open for feeding. Were the spat allowed to remain there, it would soon so increase in size as to cause serious incon

venience to the old oyster, and eventually destroy its life. But, as soon as it attaches in dangerous proximity to the mouth of the shell, the old oyster works it or blows it from its position, and it finds another object, as in figure 8, which represents oysters attached to a neck of a glass bottle, and to a handle, and also a fragment of a jug; or it fastens to another place on the same shell. It is no uncommon occurrence to find in the natural beds large central oysters literally encrusted with those of smaller size, so arranged as to demonstrate the foregoing fact.

From the great prolificacy of the female oyster, it might readily be inferred that the increase would far exceed the demands, great as they are, upon the natural beds. A single female oyster contains about two million ova, all of which, under favorable circumstances, should develop into perfect oysters. But in deep water most circumstances are unfavorable to the existence of the ova and spat. They are beset by enemies and casualties from the spawn until the shells of the young become sufficiently formed and hardened to afford protection.

In the Chesapeake, as in all the oyster waters of this country, the increase is altogether from the natural beds, where the ova and young cannot be protected. In the deep water the temperature is often too cold for the development of the ova, and even when developed many of the delicate spats perish. Planted oysters are not allowed to remain undisturbed a sufficient length of time to enable them to breed. In the most favorable breeding localities, as in Tangiers Sound, the beds grow to such thickness that the underlying oyters are destroyed by the superincumbent weight of the accumulations. Here the beds are two feet and upward in thickness, with only a few inches of the upper portion composed of those living. Oysters will not survive for any long time when covered with sand, mud, or any other matter; and sometimes, by a change of current, or from disturbance of the bottom by violent storms, extensive natural beds are covered by sand and destroyed. The young oysters, when they accumulate so rapidly as is the case in Tangiers, add a stratum yearly to the natural beds, and destroy a corresponding stratum underneath. The increase is, therefore, only in the extension of the area occupied by the beds. Here dredging has been found most beneficial, as the dredge relieves the beds of their weight, and spreads the oysters over the A half century since, the bottom of the Chesapeake was interspersed with numerous isolated beds of small extent and great thickness, but dredging has so scattered them that they now form almost a continuous bed, covering the whole bottom. Dredging also clears the upper portions of the beds of the accumulations of mud and sand. The ova adhere best to clean objects, and the dirt destroys the delicate spat.. Varieties. Notwithstanding the proximity of the different varieties of the oyster, each preserves its identity, and they remain as it were in separate families. The number of varieties found in the Chesapeake has not been precisely ascertained, but it is supposed to be about thirty. Some of them have been imported from the Atlantic coast, and others from the southern rivers as plants, but most of them are indigenous. Those in the deep waters of the bay differ from such as are on the shouls, and the same variety is not frequently found in two rivers, however near their entrance into the bay. Nature has provided thick, hard shells, capable of affording perfect security from their numerous enemies, for those in deep water; while, in the small and comparatively shallow rivers, where their foes do not exist in such numbers, the shells are thin and easily broken.

In the deposits of crustacea and acephala, forming a great portion of the marl beds in the vicinity of the Chesapeake, there are many varieties

of the oyster and clam that have existed in its waters in some unknown period of the past, but which are now extinct. Oyster shells measuring fourteen inches in length, (Fig. 6,) and clam shells one and a half inch thick and six or seven inches in breadth, are found in a state of perfect preservation.

More recent banks or deposits of shells found on the shores of the bay in the county of Talbot and of Dorchester, in Maryland, show but little difference in size or conformation from those existing at the present time. Here are banks of shells one foot to four feet thick, extending indefinitely into the mainland, and covered by soil to such a depth as to admit of cultivation.

Food.-From the investigations of scientific men nothing certain is learned as regards the peculiar food of the oyster. The regular oyster-men, who observe them at all seasons and in all conditions, entertain no other idea on the subject than that they feed upon the salt water. Certain it is that they feed only on the flood of the tide, as their shells are then open, while they are closed during the ebb. That they do eat or swallow and digest their food is inferred from their internal construction, as nature has provided them with the full complement of organs adapted to the purpose. Evidence that other food than that derived simply from salt water is consumed, is furnished in the fact that they grow and fatten near the land, in shallow water better than in the open sea, and become more perfect in size and condition in the mouths of the rivers, the floods of which carry down the elements of growth and thrift.

Artificial breeding.-With all these natural advantages afforded by the Chesapeake for the successful propagation and culture of the oyster crop, the business is not efficiently managed by the unscientific men who are, at present, engaged in the work. Were the operations conducted with skill and judgment, the profits would be greatly enlarged, and the annual product could be almost indefinitely multiplied. The artificial propaga tion and culture of oysters are not attended by the risks and expenses of pisciculture, and require less skill and attention to insure success; yet streams heretofore tenantless of fish are now well stocked artificially with the finest and most delicious of the finny tribe. Oyster planting is here conducted in a slovenly and wasteful manner, while new plantations are seldom made from the spawn or the young oysters. The plan here adopted for the formation of new beds is to fasten in the natural beds, previous to the breeding season, a few stakes with brush attached. The spawn will attach to these in considerable numbers, and, when the ova are developed to the proper condition, the stakes are withdrawn, and fixed in the bottoms where it is intended to form new plantations or beds. In the third year from the spawn the new plantation begins to breed, and after that period it rapidly multiplies when the conditions are favorable.

M. Costé, a scientific gentleman and eminent naturalist of France, who has made the study of the oyster a specialty, proposes to stock the whole available coast of France with oysters, at a cost of about six dollars per acre. He has invented a small, portable machine, which he sinks in the natural beds previous to the breeding season, and leaves it to become freighted with the ova, and these to be developed into young oysters, when he withdraws the machine, and places it with its living attachments in some favorable locality that he wishes to stock with the bivalves. M. Costé has thus transplanted 20,000 young oysters at one time on his apparatus, which he assures us may be easily managed, and and on which the young oysters may be carried to any reasonable distance. It may be seen, therefore, what immense profits the extensive