Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/248

234 and the more oval, fan-shaped, and ribbed Princess Bays, Their journey of twelve days across the continent, in sugar barrels, from New York to San Francisco and thence to Oregon without



water did not cause the mortality one might expect, for in strewing them over the bed from the scows of the oystermen very few dead individuals were observed—certainly not one half of one per cent.

This alien oyster has much to contend with here. It was realized that the cold and salt water rushing in from the Pacific—colder and Salter by far than in their Atlantic home at the same time—if it did not entirely prevent spawning would at least make the survival of the young embryos a matter of doubt; yet it was hoped that perhaps, after a number of years, the oysters might become acclimated, as it were, and their spawn, inheriting their parents' acquired hardiness, we might present to the people of the State a new form of Oregon product in the shape of Eastern oysters hatched and grown in the waters of this bay. Notwithstanding the fecundity of this oyster, a female producing in the vicinity of sixty million eggs at a spawning, it must be remembered that even under the most favorable conditions in its own home, where the water has in summer a fairly constant temperature of over 70° F. and a salinity of 1.012 on an average, but a very small proportion of this multitude survive. How much more unlikely is its survival in the waters of Yaquina Bay, Oregon, where the writer has seen the water change from a temperature of 70° F. and a saltness of 1.012 to a temperature of 55° and a salinity of 1.022 within six hours! It was to save the young embryos from exposure to these and kindred dangers that I, as a volunteer employee of the United