During the past two years the United States Fish Commission, with characteristic enterprise, has been carrying on experiments in the propagation of Eastern oysters in the bays of the Oregon coast. Work of a similar nature is now being undertaken in the State of Washington. [Illustration: "OYSTER CITY," YAQUINA BAY, OREGON.] As the result of an application through official sources, re-enforced possibly by the results of a biological survey made by this department during the preceding summer, twenty-two barrels of Eastern oysters were, on November 7, 1896, deposited on a portion of Oysterville Flat, so called, in Yaquina Bay, Oregon, seven miles and a half from the ocean. The oystermen of that section have agreed to abstain from tonging for native oysters upon the portion of the flat thus reserved until sufficient time has elapsed to justify an opinion as to the result of the experiment. These introduced oysters were of two varieties--the long, slender East Rivers and the more oval, fan-shaped, and ribbed Princess Bays. Their journey of twelve days across the continent, in sugar barrels, from New York to San Francisco and thence to Oregon without water did not cause the mortality one might expect, for in strewing them over the bed from the scows of the oystermen very few dead individuals were observed--certainly not one half of one per cent. [Illustration: AN EXPERIMENTAL SPAWNING FLOAT.] This alien oyster has much to contend with here. It was realized that the cold and salt water rushing in from the Pacific--colder and salter by far than in their Atlantic home at the same time--if it did not entirely prevent spawning would at least make the survival of the young embryos a matter of doubt; yet it was hoped that perhaps, after a number of years, the oysters might become acclimated, as it were, and their spawn, inheriting their parents' acquired hardiness, we might present to the people of the State a new form of Oregon product in the shape of Eastern oysters hatched and grown in the waters of this bay. Notwithstanding the fecundity of this oyster, a female producing in the vicinity of sixty million eggs at a spawning, it must be remembered that even under the most favorable conditions in its own home, where the water has in summer a fairly constant temperature of over 70° F. and a salinity of 1.012 on an average, but a very small proportion of this multitude survive. How much more unlikely is its survival in the waters of Yaquina Bay, Oregon, where the writer has seen the water change from a temperature of 70° F. and a saltness of 1.012 to a temperature of 55° and a salinity of 1.022 within six hours! It was to save the young embryos from exposure to these and kindred dangers that I, as a volunteer employee of the United States Fish Commission during the summers of 1897 and 1898, among other things resorted to the artificial fertilization of the eggs in a temporary laboratory, carrying the delicate embryos to the swimming