Family Ostfueidie

The starfish begins its ravages upon oysters scarcely the 430 The Oysters size of a pin head, and continues through life. It swallows the spat, and oysters up to three inches long. Its stomach is turned wrong side out, and often wrapped around the victim, which is overcome by the digestive fluids. The flexible arms clasp the oyster shell, adhering by means of their rows of sucking disks. Dr. Schiemenz believes the star actually forces apart the valves of large shells by main strength. It holds on until the victim's strength is gone, then thrusts its inverted stomach into the in terior and absorbs the contents.

Starfishes go in schools, migrating from place to place, destroy ing the victims in their path. In brackish water they do little harm, but in outside beds destruction may be complete before the owner suspects that anything is wrong.

The "tangle," a great mop made of bunches of ravelled rope, supported on iron rods, is let down from a vessel, by davitts with block and fall, and drawn across the oyster beds. Stars of varying sizes are brought up, entangled in its meshes. The best equipped boats have a trough of water heated by connec tion with the boiler of the engine. Into this the mops are plunged. It kills the stars, and the tangle is lowered again. With this labour and time saving device, using two tangles, alternately hauled, over one hundred thousand starfishes have been gathered in a single day. A bed is not considered safe to leave as long as half a bushel of stars can be caught in a day.

Drills are so small as to make their capture very difficult. An eye out for drills is a prime necessity in dredging and culling. The tangle gets a few, but this is incidental. A dredge with fine screen sides and bottom, and lid of inch mesh screen has a sharp iron lip. Dragged along the bottom, this scoops up everything that is loose ; the drills and other small debris fall into the dredge, the coarse material passes over the lid, and is left behind. The dredge is drawn up, and the drills destroyed.

In any dredging many young oysters are destroyed. But dredging for enemies is the lesser of two evils.

Crabs are a formidable oyster enemy in Chesapeake Bay. They are also profitable shell fish ; so they are permitted to live until of marketable age, though they cause great damage to the oyster beds. A tangle takes them up in great numbers.

The sting ray or "stingaree" menaces the oyster beds in San Francisco Bay. To exclude this enemy palisades of stakes 431 The Oysters set four inches apart fence in some of the beds. The oyster parts of France have leafy branches, called Mignons, interlaced in the gates that close the canals, to frighten away skates and devilfish which might enter when the beds are flooded by the tide. It is necessary to go over oyster beds with dredge and tongs to take up debris such as seaweed that has drifted in, and threat ens to smother the young oysters.

This truth is evident : a stretch of sea bottom favourable for an oyster colony encourages colonisation by various other marine forms of life, animal and vegetable. The oyster farmer must fight nature as the grower of corn or cabbages wages war upon weeds and insect enemies.

The Oyster Harvest. — Oyster beds are owned or leased, according to varying state laws, and there are public beds where anybody having a local licence may fish. No general fishing is allowed in summer, nor may anyone ever fish by night. The size and type of vessels and tools to be used are regulated by law.

Private owners and lessees are careful that the boundaries of their beds be respected. These boundaries are marked by stakes in shoal water; in deep water by buoys. A public or private police force (often both) restrains illicit fishing. Public senti ment is strongly against law-breakers.

Shoal beds are usually fished from small boats: canoes in Chesapeake Bay, "sharpies" in Long Island Sound, dories on the New England coast. The tools used are two-handed tongs or "nippers." Each boat employs two hands, usually a man and a boy. Deeper water, especially in exposed regions, requires larger boats, more men, and more elaborate machinery for get ting the oysters. Dredges are forbidden by law in some states; steam vessels and machinery are forbidden in some. Tongs with handles thirty feet long can reach bottom to four fathoms depth.

After this, dredging is necessary. The heavy dredge is very destructive, but many private companies operate steam dredges, with large crews of men, the most rapid, if the most wasteful, mode of taking up the crop. The small-toothed rake dredge is less efficient but less destructive.