OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 401 



Dredgerman's Co-operative Society, under "The Bosham 

 Fishery Order, 1873." 



I regret to have to report that the fishery has not 

 increased in productiveness since it fell under the manage- 

 ment of the society. When the Order was made in 1873, 

 the ground was almost denuded of oysters ; but Mr. Pennell, 

 in his report made after holding a public inquiry previously 

 to its grant, remarked upon the unusual proportion borne 

 by spat and brood to the number of mature oysters on the 

 beds. It is not improbable that if all the young then upon 

 the ground had been afforded an opportunity of spatting, 

 a marked improvement might already have been visible in 

 the state of the fishery. Unfortunately, about a third of it 

 was destroyed in the winter of the same year by an inva- 

 sion of sand, which took place in consequence of an altera- 

 tion, caused by storms, in the bar at the entrance of 

 Chichester Harbour, and by the deposit of large quantities 

 of mud owing to the rupture, on two different occasions, of 

 embankments belonging to large reclamation works by the 

 side of the channel. At the same time the dredgermen, 

 under the pressure of poverty, were unable to exercise 

 sufficient self-denial to maintain the regulations by which 

 they had bound themselves. They have always observed a 

 close time longer than that required by their bye-laws, and 

 fishing has only taken place from November to April ; but 

 the more effective rule, that oysters less than three inches 

 in diameter are to be returned to the water, has been neg- 

 lected until last year ; so that most of the oysters grown 

 from the plentiful spat of 1873 have been stripped off 

 before they could breed. The number upon the part of 

 the ground which was not destroyed does not now seem to 

 be larger than in 1873, while the quantity of brood and 

 spat is immeasurably smaller. In 1876 the dredgermen, 



