1008 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



previously sealed by the Customs House authorities in 

 order to preclude its use. 



It may here be observed (says Professor Talfourd 

 Chater) that a confusion has sometimes arisen between 

 the close-time for, and certain precautions enforced to 

 prevent the premature destruction of salt-water fish. 



. (Thus we may regard) close-time both as 

 defining the period during which fish may not be actually 

 caught on the one hand, and as defining the period during 

 which they may not be offered for sale on the other. 

 Ardnamurchan herrings may not be caught between the 

 ist of February and the 3ist of May, and oysters may 

 not be sold between the i5th of June and the 4th of 

 August. Close-time is thus two-fold ; it either relates to 

 time of catching or to time of sale, (m) 



As to the general policy of regulating oyster fisheries 

 by close times and otherwise there is much difference of 

 opinion. 



Mr. Huxley delivered a discourse on this 

 question at the Royal Institution (May nth, 1883), in 

 which he called attention to the fluctuations in the supply 

 of oysters from the principal French beds. These have 

 long been under a system of restrictions far more severe 

 than anything that has been or could be proposed in 

 England ; but' the increase or falling off in the number of 

 oysters taken (and in many years the variations have been 

 very great and sudden), appears to have no intelligible 

 relation whatever to the rules imposed by the State. In 

 fact, there have been violent fluctuations both ways, while 

 the rules and their administration were unchanged. Mr. 

 Huxley's conclusion is that the abundance or scarcity of 



(m) Relations of the State with Fishermen and Fisheries. 



