The development and protection of the oyster in Maryland by W.K. Brooks, PhD. Being the report written by him as chairman of the Oyster commission of the state of Maryland, and presented to the General Assembly, February, 1884.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1884. First edition.

1884 SCARCE LIMITED EDITION OF A DETAILED REPORT ON THE CHESAPEAKE OYSTER ILLUSTRATED WITH LITHOGRAPHED PLATES AND LARGE FOLDING MAPS.

11 1/2 inches tall folio hardcover, recent tan cloth binding, leather spine with gilt title, new endpapers, 193 pp, 13 plates, 4 large color maps (26 x 32 1/2, 16 3/4 x 34 1/2, 31 x 35, and 31 x 36 1/2 inches). Binding fine, small library handstamp verso title page, faint embossed library seal to edge of each plate. Very good in custom archival mylar cover. Maps have browning of creases, archival tape repair to some creases, good overall. 13 copies in Worldcat. MESSAGE TO THE TRUSTEES OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY FROM D.C. GILMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY: "In accordance with your request, a small edition has been printed, for the use of the University, of a Report of the Oyster Commission of the State of Maryland, which has just been presented to the Legislature of this State. Its author is one of our own staff, Professor W. K. BROOKS, Ph. D., who has devoted the greater part of his time during the last eighteen months to the study of the problem of perpetuating the oyster beds of the Chesapeake. The fact that he was made a member of the Oyster Commission, by appointment of the Governor of the State, should not conceal the part which this University has taken in the prosecution of the enquiry. Dr. Brooks, for the last six years, has been the Director of the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory, an organization maintained at the expense of the Johns Hopkins University for the study of the manifold forms of living creatures which are found upon our sea-board. As long ago as 1878 he perceived the importance of the oyster, in its economical and in its scientific aspects, and began a series of prolonged, delicate, and original investigations respecting the mode by which the young are propagated, and the conditions of their early life."

WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS (1848 – 1908) was an American zoologist who studied under Louis Agassiz at Harvard, receiving his PhD in 1875. A year later he became a junior faculty member at Johns Hopkins University when it opened, teaching and researching marine biology. He founded the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory where he spent most summers, moving each summer between Crisfield, Maryland, Hampton, Virginia, tBeaufort, North Carolina, Jamaica, and the Tortugas. Commissioned by the state of Maryland to study the American oyster, Brooks' findings led to the discovery that fertilization of this type of oyster, unlike the European form, occurred outside the body. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, National Academy of Sciences, the National Philosophical Society, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the Boston Society of Natural History, the Maryland Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Society of Zoologists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Microscopical Society.