The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1901-04-26
A RESULT IN OYSTER
PLANTING.


The Baltimore Herald has recently
published the following timely COM
ments on the oyster question. 1t says
In a dispatch from Chestertown,
Md, published in the Herald of Tues.
day, there is an incident mentioned
that illustrates a fact of the highest
Importance to this state. The para
graph follows:
During the winter of 1894 Strong e.
Beck of Rock Hail. while shipping oys-
tiers to the Philadelphia market, reculled
the oysters bought by them, and the re-
1use, III which were a few oysters very
small, was thrown overheard alongside
the Chester River Steamboat wharf in
Rock Hall creek. Not over two bushels
were thrown overheard. Two years later
they took from alongside that wharf fifty
five bushels of large, marketable oysters
and got sixty five cents per busbel for
them, proving conclusively that oyster
planting does pay, and handsomely, too.
Fifty-fve bushels of oysters from
two bushels Of refuse may sound to
those unacquainted with body oysters
like a haphazard exaggeration. A
half dozen young oysters, not larger
than dime, may be attached to sim
gle half shell. These half dozen di.
minutive mollucks in two years will
have grown to five inch length and
a two-inch width. The statement
quoted is undoubtedly accurate and the
moral which it points is one in which
every citizen of Maryland is interested.
Professor Brooks, who has given much
careful study both to the Maryland
oyster and the oyster industry, has
said that the Chesapeake bay can be
made to yield greater annual wealth
than all the farms, truck gardens and
orchards of the state combined.
The result obtained on very small
scale at Rock Hall illustrates OAR
TALLY what the Hopkins biologist
means. Multiply two bushels by lOO,-
600 and then increase SIS bushels in
tic same manner, and the result is i've
million five hundred thousand bushels.
And the judicious planting of 3 ,O00,0 900
bushels means the harvesting later of
55,O00,00O bushels. The results of
methodic planting would perhaps be
even greater, because of the better dis
tribut:on of the young oysters The
question of obtaining the seedlings for
planting is one that the scientific ex-
pcrimcntcrs have also solved. There
is nothing that lives in the water So
prolific as the oyster. Many millions
of spat come from single oyster
Not 2 per cent. of the embryos sur
vive, because they find nothing to at
tach themselves to- The exhausted
beds can be made more populous than
ever before by the distribution Of
shells or other material to which the
young may cling. By artificial pro-
pagation and by intelligent distribu-
ton the oyster production of the Ches-
apeake can be increased twentyfold.
In another part of the communica-
ton from which the foregoing para
graph is quoted it is stated that a
firm that has gone extensively into
oyster planting is doubling the money
invested every year; also, that the
most bitter opponents Of the planting
system few years ago are now in the
business themselves.
There are large number of indus
trous, thrifty people distributed along
the 2OO-mile stretch Of the Chesapeake
bay who make a livelihood from the
taking of oysters. 1t is class whose
direct interests cannot be ignored.
But already many natural beds have
become exhausted. In time, oysters
must be cultivated in the Chesapeake
bay, just as they are now cultivated in
Long Island sound. The tongers in
the vicinity Of Rock Hall who have
become planters have but set an exam
pie which other wise tongers should
profit by. A rightly constructed law
that would encourage planting should
really be in the interest of the tongers