OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 371 



ways at that time, created a demand which began to tell 

 on the stocks accumulated during the time of plenty. 



" Recognising the difficulty of replacing the oysters that 

 were being so rapidly consumed, proprietors, in 1863, 

 began to raise their prices by an increase at first of a few 

 shillings per bushel. Gradually the price rose to fifty 

 shillings, then to three pounds, and it was thought by many 

 that the end of the oyster trade was near when it was 

 proposed to ask four guineas. 



" The year 1866 brought a little spat, and from that time 

 down to 1 88 1, the rivers in Essex had been favoured with 

 occasional falls, but not in such quantities as to materially 

 affect the supply. Notwithstanding the continued rise in 

 price, the public taste and appetite seemed to become 

 keener, and then the price went up by leaps and bounds 

 of two guineas and more at a time, until it fetched last 

 season the remarkably high sum of sixteen pounds per 

 bushel, or by numbers, at the rate of half-a-crown per 

 dozen wholesale price for best natives. 



" The climax has been reached, and the value is now 

 tumbling down more rapidly than it went up, and will do 

 so until it settles at its normal level. There is a vast 

 consumption of oysters in this country, and many millions 

 of foreign oysters are annually consumed. This demand 

 will prevent English oysters from going a-begging, for as 

 soon as the price comes within the limits of the pockets of 

 the million the downward fall will be arrested. This 

 promised plentiful supply is due to an extraordinary fall of 

 spat in the rivers in Essex and on the grounds at their 

 mouths during the summer of 1881. Scarcely a laying in 

 clean condition failed to receive some of this gift from 

 Nature, while at the entrances to the Blackwater and the 

 Colne, as well as along the coast, millions of young oysters 



