Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/671

Rh With oysters the case is different, and the Chinese are still obliged to keep up a systematic cultivation. At Ta-kao, in Formosa, two methods of propagation are employed. The first consists in, casting here and there on the mud-banks, stones, which are to be taken up again five or six months afterward, when they will be found to be covered with oysters. The other method, called by the natives bamboo-culture, is more complicated, but also more productive. In August or September the oystermen prepare a number of bamboo sticks, of about the size of a walking-cane, by pointing one end and splitting the other end to about half-way down. They wedge a flat oyster-shell into the cleft, and, bringing the splits together at the top, insert them to be held into a hole they have bored in another oyster-shell. They then plant the stakes, in close rows, where they will be covered at high tide, so that the fry can attach themselves to them. As soon as the little oysters have formed on the sticks, the latter are transplanted to the mud-bank, whence they are pulled out, in time, covered with oysters large enough to eat. The Chinese pretend that the fry forms on the oyster-shell, and can be preserved there indefinitely. All the pains we have described are taken to promote the hatching of the eggs with which the old shells are supposed to be already covered.

The Chinese aquatic fauna is exceedingly varied, and contains representatives of nearly all the kinds that are found in the waters of Western Europe. The fishermen have given to each species a particular name, which is generally suggested by its form, or by some other distinctive characteristic. Thus, they have the war-god crab, so called because its head looks like the head of that divinity; the little bonze crab; and the all-sour crab, so named from its bad taste. The scientific disciples of Confucius have adopted these names in their more or less fantastic works on the natural history of the Middle Kingdom, and the painters have enriched these works with illustrations intended to facilitate the understanding of the text. Frequently the pictures, notwithstanding their imperfections, give a more exact idea of their subjects than the pretended descriptions by which they are accompanied. The last are, in fact, so fanciful that it is impossible to form a conception of the creatures to which they are supposed to relate. Thus, we may learn from them that frogs have only three feet, while lobsters are provided "with so great a number that the most patient man can not count them." The accounts of the habits of the creatures are even more fabulous than those concerning their structure. Some are said to live without eating; some to increase by breaking into pieces; and others to be able to live as well on the land as in the water.

Authenticated by the signatures of the disciples of Confucius, and by appearing in print, these fables are believed by the people more readily than even the observations they may make on the animals themselves The fanciful descriptions of three-legged frogs, made by a literatus who lived three hundred years ago, is to-day accepted by