Shell Fish

That delicious bivalve, the Oyster, has its home among us. Everyone who has visited New Orleans in winter has noted the exceptionally palatable Oysters that are sold in every restaurant and by the numerous small vendors on almost every other corner or so throughout the lower section of the city. In the cafes, the hotels, the Oyster saloons, they are served in every conceivable style known to epicures and caterers. The Oyster beds adjacent to New Orleans send to our market the famous Bayou Cook and Barataria Oysters, eagerly sought and highly prized for exquisite flavor and unsurpassed in quality. The Mississippi Sound is well-nigh stocked with Oysters from one end to the other, and millions of cans are shipped yearly from Biloxi and other points to every part of the United States. And so with our celebrated Lake and River Shrimp. No Oysters are caught in the Mississippi Sound between May and September, because they are somewhat milky, and considered unfit for use, and so strict are the laws governing the uses of dredges in the sound that a watchman accompanies each dredgeboat to see that no attempt is made to use the dredge in less than fourteen feet of water, the idea being that dredges shall not be used where the water is sufficiently shallow to admit of their being dug with tongs. Thus are preserved, in all their splendid flavor and almost inexhaustible supply, our Oyster beds, and while the yearly increase in consumption of this delicious bivalve has tended to alarm scientists and to awaken an interest in the question as to whether the American Oyster beds may not likely become depleted, scientists acquainted with the Oyster beds on our Gulf coast say that for domestic purposes there are sufficient Oysters to supply the United States.