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Each spawning season will add new oysters to this mass until in the course of a fow years time the first or original oysters, which have become enveloped by the new growth will be destroyed; at least a large per cent of them. Consequently there is practically no increase in the supply from one year to another, because the annual increase of new oysters which will attach themselves on the outside of this "oyster rock," as you might term it, will be offset by the destruction of an equal number of old oysters that are smothered to death on the inside.
Supoose we began tonging oysters'from this natural "oyster rock" so long as we continue to work on this one snot the result will finally be the same as the man who had $1,000.00 in bank, anff for every SI.00 afterwards put in he would take £-2.00 out; because we would be taking the oysters more rapidly than they could propagate on so small a surface.
On the other hand, suppose we begin working this natural "oyster rock" with a dredge:	The	Dredge,	which	acts	as	a	rake,
would break loose these large bunches of oysters, and, say the original bed covered an area of one (1) acres, by dredging on it back and forth we vould spread it over an area of (5) acres, allowing at the same time that ve take 50 per cent of the oysters contained in that original bed. This wd would accomplish in one season's work, or in much less time. VJhen the spawning season begins, and you must know that every live oyster, whether large or small, will spavn from 100,000 to half-a-million, and some estimates places it at one million eggs; and granting that 75 per cent of these eggs are consumed or destroyed by fishes and other species of the water tribe, there still remains a goodly number of these eggs which, if preserved, will yield enormously.
But this spawn must have something solid to fasten to; if allowed to fall in the mud it will perish. On hard smooth bottom there is nothing to fasten on, and the action of the water would cause it to shift its position; consequently we must provide that which nature has not.
Any one familiar vith the nature of the oyster spawn, knows that there is nothing to which it will so readily attach and adhere to as an oyster shell. This is because the shell has a rough surface for the spawn to fasten on, frence the reason why propagators of oysters in this and other states use oyster shells to cover the bbttom of their oyster farms, before spawning season, to secure a "set." In addition to shells being the test substance adapted for this purpose, they are also to te recommended for their cheapness
Ve will now go back to our original "oyster rock" of one acre which ve have by means of the Dredge distributed over five (5) acres. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the five acres of oyster bottom will take care of and preserve more of these oyster eggs than tha one acre "oyster rock" ? and, also it is not reasonable to suppose that the oysters spread over five acres.vill develope to large size and much more rapidly than the oysters bunched together in an acre,
granting that the same number of tushels exist on the five acres as on the one acre ?