Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — AN ENEMY TO THE OYSTER. [ARTICLE]

AN ENEMY TO THE OYSTER.

Great Destruction la the Delaware Bay Beds by the “ Borer.” The " borer,” e pest of about the tbm of a small strawberry. Is working groat havoc among the oyster beds in Deiawasn Bay and tributary streams. Cspt. Moses Veale, of the oyeiav schooner White Lily, eays thst the destructive powers of the “borer” have been known to oyetermen only a few years. He has followed oyster dredging nearly thirty-five years, and the firat “ borer " he aaw was about ten years age, but their ravage* in the oyster beds were comparatively unnoticed until leet year. Cspt. Veale said that “ last year the number of dead oysters with holes made by borers in the shell became so groat that oystermen were alarmed. The year ths work of tbe borers has become a grove matter, and if it continues many bays will be depopulated of oysters. From one bed we dredged on this trip we rot 1,800 baskets of oysters, but out of thero only 200 were good, ths dead oyster* having been killed by borers. A peculiar thing about the ravages of the ‘ borers ’ is their apparent selection of the best oyster-beds. We have found this to be true several times this season. We have found a bed of small oysters almost entirely free froae ‘borers.’ This bed will be separated from another bed of larger oysters, by 200 feet, bnt this latter bed will be so badly affected by the creatures thst it will hardly pay to work it. “ From what I can learn from oystermen the destruction wrought by borers fie much more severe in Delaware Bay thaa in other places. “The work of the borer this year makes a double misfortune, for the oyster bods were badly damaged by the Mg storms in August and September. Very few people who are not in the oysterdredging business know anything of the methods of the borer. When I first took notice of its work I secured several oysters just after the borer had fastened itself to the shell. When the borer fastens itself it holds on like a leech, and it in with difficulty that it can be removed with the fingers. " Sometimes the 1 borer’ fastens itself to the oyster shell near the edge, and then the oyster is not killed. Wbca the whole of the ‘borer’ is made near the centre of the shell the oyster is attacked in its vital parts and dies in three or four days after the hole is first made.” Some of the bed-owners nesr Mauriee River have lost large suma of money tide year on account of the “ borer." Thomas Munaoy, who has a number of large bedA it is said, will lose SIO,OOO. Several other men have lost nearly as roach through this unlooked-for calamity, and s number of men have lost in the neighborhood of $2,000 or $3,000. All antermon say there can be no way of taking away the “borer” without destroying the oyster-beds.—[Philadelphia Ledger.}