OYSTER CULTURE IN FRANCE. 523 



Wise measures have been taken to prevent a recurrence 

 of these depredations. 



Thanks to assiduous watching ; thanks to the power 

 left to the Maritime Administration to forbid fishing at any 

 given place during one or two years, if the necessity for 

 such prohibition has been recognised by the Commissions 

 charged with ascertaining the state of the oyster-beds ; 

 thanks, lastly, to the district where it is absolutely forbidden 

 to fish, which the State has decided to reserve, and from 

 which reproduction radiates upon all neighbouring places, 

 the oyster-beds are now reviving. 



Certainly this work of revival cannot be entirely accom- 

 plished in so short a time. In spite of the extraordinary 

 fecundity which the oyster possesses, it is necessary that 

 the places where the spat is about to fall should present the 

 conditions indispensable for its development. Now these 

 conditions are not always found on banks exhausted by 

 reckless fishing. We must wait for them to be reconstituted 

 and renewed. 



The ostricultural industry, properly so called, is carried 

 on at Granville in 85 pares of deposit, which serve only to 

 shelter the oysters fished on the neighbouring banks, till 

 the time when the rearers from Courseulles and La Hougue, 

 who usually purchase them, come to take them away. 



These pares are all bounded by a double fence, from 

 70 to So centimetres high ; the space between the two 

 fences is filled with a layer of potter's earth, mixed with 

 straw, or with mud only. This arrangement is intended to 

 prevent the oysters placed in the pares from being carried 

 away and dispersed by the sea, and at the same time to 

 keep in the water at low tide to shield them from the effects 

 of heat and cold. I should add that the sea is so often 



