ARTIFICIAL OYSTER CULTIVATION. 1177 



operation a certain quantity called a "stint" is assigned to 

 each boat ; this it must complete, but not exceed. The 

 other days are devoted, as necessary, to cleaning the ground 

 of vermin, laying down, and shifting oysters from one part 

 of the ground to the other. 



From the izth of May to the middle of June the boats 

 are busy for five or six hours every day, removing all 

 oysters that will be ready for the market by the end of the 

 summer from the breeding and growing beds to the 

 fattening grounds. At the same time the ground is cleaned 

 and prepared as far as possible for the coming fall of spat. 



From the middle of June to the 4th of August, i.e. 

 during the spatting season, the beds remained untouched, 

 and the fishermen are employed yachting and in other 

 seaside vocations. 



In former years the company trusted greatly for its 

 supply to the spat of its oysters floating on the common 

 ground, known as " The Flats," where the small oysters 

 were dredged up and sold to the company to be redeposited 

 upon their grounds ; but of late years this supply, although 

 continued, has become wholly insufficient, and they have 

 been obliged to seek their brood, &c., elsewhere. 



The principal sources of the present supply are the 

 Pont, the Essex rivers, viz. the Blackwater, Crouch, Roach, 

 and their tributaries ; the basins of Arcachon and Auray 

 in France, Schleswig in Holland, the Skelling Bank off 

 Heligoland, and various places in Scotland and Ireland. 

 The prices paid to dredgermen for oysters found on the 

 Flats were last year as follows : 



All mature oysters of whatever kind, 135. per hundred 

 (1800 to 2000 to the bushel) ; brood or half- ware (which 

 run from 3000 to 6000 to the bushel), 6s. per hundred. 



