1072 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



harvesting of oysters. The writers who did so knew 

 neither the nature of the oyster nor the character of our 

 seas. They might just as well have said to the inhabitants 

 of the lower portion of the Elbe : " Lay out vineyards, for 

 in 1874 the department of the Lower Loire produced 

 1,914,427 hectoliters of wine, and the department of 

 Gironde 5,123,643 hectoliters." In Egypt there is nothing 

 lacking, except water, in order to produce dates and wine 

 in abundance, upon the desert which stretches from Cairo 

 to Suez. So it is with us : all we lack in order to carry on 

 successfully artificial oyster-breeding upon the mud flats 

 of the North Sea are mild winters, with no ice, and security 

 against the force of storm-floods. There is food enough 

 there to feed billions of oysters. 



The old English method of oyster-culture was much 

 simpler than the new French method. The work con- 

 sisted chiefly in transplanting young oysters from the 

 natural banks along the coast to suitable beds in the 

 mouths ot rivers, where they became fat and well flavoured. 

 They also removed the mud and plants from these new 

 beds, destroyed as many of the enemies of the oyster as 

 possible, and improved the ground by scattering over it 

 the shells of oysters and other molluscs. This industry is 

 carried on in a much better manner at Whitstable. 



In the year 1864 there were brought to the London 

 market alone more than 495,000,000 of oysters, which were 

 worth over ^"2,000,000 sterling. The culture of oysters 

 being thus of so much importance to Great Britain, it was 

 very natural that attempts at artificial oyster breeding in 

 France should be watched with intense interest, and imi- 

 tated at various points along the British coast. It was 

 carried on most extensively upon the coast of the small 

 island of Hayling, east from Portsmouth, by the South of 



