OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 345 



first week in June in the Fusaro pond, and there was no 

 second display. 



Unfortunately for this supply of young oysterlings, 

 really magnificent by reason of their number and the man- 

 ner in which they had thriven by the beginning of the 

 following September, it was determined, contrary to the 

 advice of the company's manager, to allow the young 

 oysters to remain attached to the hurdles in their first 

 position for a certain time, and until they had obtained a 

 larger size. The consequence was that the shell of the 

 growing babies grew round the sticks of the hurdles, and 

 in subsequently removing them the under shell was broken 

 in three cases out of four, and 75 per cent, of the fish 

 destroyed. 



The oysters that did not suffer from this barbarous 

 detaching process at a wrong period of life are now 

 flourishing amazingly in pares specially prepared for their 

 comfort and growth on the site of the He de Re bed of 

 last year's experiment, and which has now undergone an 

 entire remodelling and arrangement. In their new home 

 the oyster spat gathered and saved from off the hurdles 

 laid over the oysters in the Fusaro pare now measure from 

 a minimum size of one inch to a maximum of two inches in 

 diameter. In September, 1869, these oysters will be in 

 the market for consumption on our tables. The success- 

 ful experiment of 1866 in the Fusaro water was, of course, 

 repeated last year with, as nearly as possible, the same 

 preliminary attendant conditions. Strangely enough, how- 

 ever, and curiously illustrative, as it proves, of the 

 uncertainty of oyster hatching, no spat rose last year from 

 the depths of what promised the year before to be the rich- 

 est oyster mine in England. No known and reliable theory 



