When an oyster egg hatches it produces a larva. The larva eventually "settles" and cements itself as a "spat" to a clean submerged stone or old shell, where it grows until big enough to eat. Just what makes the spats settle has always been an ostreiculture problem. Last week Herbert F. Prytherch of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries gave an answer, in Science.
At the oyster beds of Milford Harbor, Conn., where the Indian River empties into Long Island Sound, he found the spats settling only at low tide. That is when...
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