346 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



can account for this striking difference in the marked 

 success of one year and the failure of the next. 



This part of the company's grounds has been re- 

 arranged. They now comprise one breeding-pond (the 

 old Fusaro water) empty, and cleaning out in readiness for 

 future operations, with six acres of water space, divided 

 into nine pares, lying parallel with each other. Each pare 

 is enclosed by puddled clay walls, lined with chalk blocks, 

 and has its water sluice at the head arid foot. The floor, 

 or bed, is made of shingle sand, and has a fall of about 

 twenty inches, from head to foot. A reservoir trench, 

 running across the head of the pares, and having commu- 

 nication with the harbour waters, gives a means of water 

 supply to the pares through the head sluices, and a 

 cleansing of their bed by rushing the water through them 

 and out through the foot sluices into the drain trench. 

 The latter also acts as a canal for the flat-boat in any visit 

 to the pares, and their contents. It is a very important 

 fact that in the shallowest of these pares during last winter 

 not one of the young oysterlings of the previous summer's 

 spat was known to have been killed by the cold weather or 

 frost. 



It is now time to return to the three-months old 

 oysterlings left imprisoned in the i8-acre pare at the 

 opposite extremity of the island. 



In September, 1866, the company's engineer had just 

 commenced operations for the formation of pares and 

 other inclosed spaces on the north-west shore of the 

 island, the walls of No. i pare being at no great distance 

 from the bridge across the narrow channel which separates 

 Havant from the island of Hayling. All then was in an 

 embryo state ; now there is one pare of 18 acres area, and 

 one of seven acres, both in working order. There are 



