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Takes 16,000,000 eggs from a single lady-oyster. Puts them into 16 jars full of salt water. Mixes with them some hundreds of millions of particles of male fertilizing material, taken from gentlemen of the various oyster families. The jars are then agitated until every egg is impregnated with the male particles. When the agitation is over, the eggs sink breathless to the bottom of the jar. At the end of six hours, up to the top float "dear little baby oysters."
Every two days for a fortnight the babies undergo the perils of journeys through a cream separator. This is to take away the impure water; the babies, having enough sense to stick to the sides of the separator, are scraped off and replaced in their jars, which are filled with fresh salt water. At the end of a fortnight the oysters have grown to one two-hundredth part of an inch and can be lifted out of the impure water by fine nets. When their shells begin to form they are permitted the delightful treat of attaching themselves to thin plates of asbestos coated with lime. From this stage they go to the tidewater experimental ponds and thence to the oyster beds at the bottom of the sea.