OYSTER CULTURE IN ITALY. 689 



its pestilential atmosphere. Now the general situation is 

 daily improving. The direction and the place of deposit 

 of the alluvium is known, the portions of the shore which 

 must be abandoned to the geological phenomena have 

 been circumscribed, and engineers are successfully resisting 

 the filling up of the lagoons. Many marshes, moreover, 

 have disappeared through the action of time, and man has 

 dried several. The influence of the marshes has diminished 

 in intensity since then ; and the laws of hygiene, now 

 better understood, renders it possible to combat more 

 effectually the paludal poisoning. Thus the reclaimed 

 lands are beginning to be peopled again, but the popula- 

 tion is exclusively agricultural. It is useful, doubtless, to 

 bring these shores, which have been reclaimed from the 

 water, under cultivation, with a view to rendering them 

 healthy, and rescuing them from sterility. But why not 

 open a yet larger field to the activity of the people, who 

 never fail to improve every new source of making a for- 

 tune, and give them these aquatic fields, which, like the 

 land, can receive seed and yield a harvest ? Does not the 

 sea support multitudes of creatures which man may utilize 

 as an important part of his food, provided he knows how 

 to apply them to his use, not only by maintaining them 

 under his hand, but, also, by encouraging their growth 

 and multiplication according to well-known laws ? 



Reasons of the greatest importance, especially in view 

 of their relation to the public maintenance, impose upon 

 us daily more and more the necessity of placing under a 

 regular system of cultivation the domain of the fluvial and 

 maritime waters. As regards the rivers and streams, this 

 necessity was long ago made known, and the art of culti- 

 vating fish is not unknown to us ; whereas maritime fish 

 culture, properly so called, has as yet received no attention. 



