ing and night three hundred surface cars cross the bridge. Added to these are more than five hundred elevated cars and many thousands of pedestrians.

Better terminal facilities would alter these conditions and relieve the bridge of such great strain. These terminals are contemplated, yet red tape and dilatoriness of public officials are responsible for conditions which, in the opinion of expert engineers, are sure to result in fearful disaster if they are not soon taken in hand. Among the officials of the lines operating across the structure and who have expressed the opinion that the bridge was in danger of breaking under the great weight imposed upon it, John F. Calderwood, general manager of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, is

very outspoken in his views. He says that his company has before it on the Brooklyn bridge the greatest transportation problem in the world and that it is powerless to better the conditions until the officials of New York and Brooklyn enlarge the terminals at both ends. Even with the large number of surface cars and elevated and cable trains that are now in operation it is impossible to carry all the people who wish to cross and thousands are forced to walk. The crowd shown in one of the illustrations was photographed during the noon hour, when the traffic is comparatively limited, while that at the New York terminal was taken in the forenoon after the business crowd had crossed to their destinations in Manhattan.

-BROWNING.

HE vegetarians to the contrary, beans, rice and other cereals are by no means the exclusive food of the Japanese. Fish is an important feature of their diet, great quantities of which are taken along their extensive shore line. Of their various sea foods, the oyster catch is one of the most interesting. However, it is not strictly speaking a catch at all, as the Japanese oysters are cultivated as carefully and systematically as are any of the dry land. crops of these most skillful of farmers. In rearing the toothsome bivalves the Japanese are experts, at least equalling in their product the artificially reared oys

ters of Holland and France, where this ancient practice has generally been supposed to have reached its highest development. Indeed, although there has never, apparently, been any communication between Europe and Japan on the subject of oyster culture, the statement is made by Prof. Bashford Dean, occupying the chair of Zoology in Columbia University, who has made a special study of the Japanese oyster farms, that the methods of culture used by European and Japanese growers are strikingly similar.

The gulf-like sea of Aki and numerous estuaries of the Island Kingdom afford ideal conditions for this class of live stock production, if it may be so designated. In this sea, oyster growing has been carried on for centuries. Regarding the

would be more profitable to plant bamboo and to cultivate oysters than to continue the tapes industry. This was the first instance, it is said, that bamboo collectors, or 'shibi,' were employed in oyster culture."

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The Japanese oysters are described as similar, though of different species, to bluepoints. and the average Long Island oyster. They are said to be of a very superior flavor, and Prof. Dean's visit to Japan was with the idea of determining the practicability of transplanting the kinds to the Pacific Coast; possibly they may be found adaptable to Eastern culture, though the large amount of labor expended upon them by the Japs may make their growing prohibitory in our best oyster regions. The Japanese use vast quantities of bamboo brush in breeding and growing their oysters. Bamboo is the national wood of the islands and is very cheap. At low tide in the sea of Aki, the water falling from ten to fifteen feet, the network of estuaries or island straits and the river mouths bristle with closely set oyster farms, and from a distance remind one, save in color, of a region of European vineyards.

Most of the bamboo stakes used retain their smaller branches, and as various patterns and labyrinths are affected by the oyster culturists in setting

city, symmetrical and exact. These designs are the outcome of centuries of oyster growing, since the eddies and swirls which play through the winding streets and avenues have been found conducive to the attachment and growth of the young oyster.

HOW THE OYSTERS ACCUMULATE.

the stakes, not, as might be supposed, for artistic effect, but to control the tide currents for the benefit of the feeding oysters, the low tide view of an oyster range is most startling and beautiful. Seen from a distance it looks as though, while the tide concealed their activities, some ocean workers had been constructing a feathery

In the first age of the oyster comes the tiny "spat," not "muling and puking in his nurse's arms," but floating about, feeling for something to which to attach himself. The feathery skeleton of the bamboo branch proves an ideal nursery. He clings to it. Not being able to live. in as dense water as his parents, bamboos

for his attraction are placed in very shallow water. After he has become established, the bamboos are pulled up, when the tide is low, and planted in much deeper water. Here, with millions of his brothers and sisters, he grows mightily for a couple of years-one of a countless host in an endless orchard. Next he is somewhat rudely scraped off his bamboo foster mother, with a heavy knife, and falls to the ground. Here, however, he is rolled and tumbled about by the tides; his shell grows stronger and he becomes a better skipper. Next and last in his well directed career he is placed at the mouth of some river, where he fattens greatly. Then it remains only to transport him to his final destination.

Not the least interesting feature of the Japanese oyster industry is its businesslike regulation by the government. There have been no grants of these valuable franchises to corporations or wire-pulling individuals forever or for ninety-nine years. The cultivatable tracts are surveyed and the farms are rented by auction to the highest bidder. The tenant during his lifetime has the right of renewal of lease; but only for so much of a farm as he can work himself. He cannot use his privilege speculatively. The franchises are administered by the government for the people, not for the benefit of cliques or corporations. Consequently there is the most natural competition in the selling price to the public.

-SHAKESPEARE.