Abstract
AS long as the English “native” keeps its prominent place in the market all questions concerning oysters and oyster culture will have a special interest for the British public at large. For the man of science oysters are none the less interesting, although from a different point of view. For him it is a great puzzle that up to now we are in so profound a state of ignorance concerning certain of the most important phases of life of a mollusk so exceedingly numerous, which may indeed be called very common, if not always plentiful, all along a large extent of the European coast. Questions such as the following:—Are oysters functional hermaphrodites or not? At what age can oysters reproduce their species? How long do the oyster Iarvæ (the so-called “spat”) swim about in the ocean as free and independent, although minute, living specks? What is the effect of currents and temperature, both upon the growth and upon the fertility of the oyster? are or were up to very lately wholly unsolved, and no really scientific inquiry had thrown any definite light upon them. Even the anatomy of the oyster was very imperfectly known, and it was only last year that the researches of Dr. Hoek, exhibited in the Netherlands department of the Exhibition, threw a flood of light upon this point. These are the first of a more extensive series of investigations which are still in preparation, and which will treat of the embryology and the food of the oyster, the fixation of the spat, and the physical conditions under which the apparently very fertile oyster beds of the Eastern Scheldt are placed. These investigations have been undertaken and pursued for three summers consecutively by the Netherlands Zoological Society.
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Oysters, Oyster Fishing, and Oyster Culture at the Fisheries Exhibition . Nature 28, 415–416 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028415a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028415a0