OYSTER FISHERY LEGISLATION. 993 



If this course were adopted, oyster-farms for breeding 

 would be rapidly established, and immense tracts of sea- 

 bed would yield a good living to hundreds of fishermen, 

 and the adjacent waters, not within the grant, would also 

 benefit by the deposit of much of the spat from the matured 

 oysters within the fishery limits. 



The harbours of Langston, Chichester, and Bosham, 

 afford a striking example of the decayed state of public 

 dredging grounds at the present time. When and so long 

 as spat falls upon the private fisheries of Whitstable, and 

 those in Essex, the coast fisheries in other parts are left to 

 the management of the fishermen of those localities ; and 

 although there has never been any protection afforded 

 them by Government, nor formal regulations for the work- 

 ing of the grounds, yet it has always been the practice of 

 those fishermen to abstain from removing brood under a 

 certain size from the public beds for sale, spat and cultch 

 being always returned to the ground. This state of things, 

 if it had continued, would always have ensured a continual 

 supply of oysters for the public markets. But at present, 

 as soon as, from any cause, oysters become scarce upon 

 the private grounds on the Essex and Kentish shores, the 

 proprietors of these find it pay to send their smacks to long 

 distances, and are permitted to dredge without restriction 

 over ground hitherto worked upon and preserved by local 

 industry. If the dredging were conducted upon equal 

 terms, this would not, perhaps, be a sufficient ground for 

 interference on the part of Government. But that owners 

 of private grounds should, whenever it pays them to do so, 

 be permitted to remove, not only fair-sized oysters, but 

 brood, spat, and cultch from public grounds, which have 



hitherto been worked upon a sound system by local fisher- 



GG 



