the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the
extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is
manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the
common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller
mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish,
as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt
sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long
thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without
the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped
along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will
be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and
not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any,
locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale
the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters
from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that
these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing
conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes
its appearance.

There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to
another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale
from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in
nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During
the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their
appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the
previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them
than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in
bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they
will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does
not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a