CHAPTER XXXI. 



OYSTER CULTURE IN NORWAY. 



CHEAP AND DEAR OYSTERS OVER-FISHING AND CARELESSNESS 

 WARM WATER BASINS DISCOVERED EXPORT OF OYSTERS IN 

 1 88 1 LIEUT.-GENERAL WERGELAND'S EXPERIMENTS. 



M. FREDRIK M. WALLEM (Executive Commissioner for 

 Norway to the International Fisheries Exhibition, London), 

 speaking at the Conference on Thursday, July 5th, 1883, 

 relative to Norwegian Oyster Culture, informed his audi- 

 ence that " Twenty or twenty-five years ago we had 

 plenty of oysters, everyone could get a bucket-full for six- 

 pence. At present the price is two guineas for a barrel of 

 oysters, and we have no oysters, or scarcely any. Our 

 oyster banks have been ruined by over-fishing and careless- 

 ness, and give now altogether no more than three or four 

 hundred pounds sterling a year to the fishermen. We have 

 tried pretty hard to assist nature, but commenced too late, 

 and have not succeeded. A couple of warm water basins, 

 in which oysters may grow, almost like flowers in a hot- 

 house, have been discovered on our coast ; spat from these 

 oyster hot-houses may be planted out on natural banks, 

 and grow to marketable oysters, but we have not yet 

 experience enough, and it seems to me that the French 

 and English systems will not quite answer on our coast, 

 without some important alterations." 



