434 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



provide for watching both mussels and oysters ; that it is 

 necessary to choose between the two, and that the result 

 of a fair trial which has been given to the former proves 

 the mussel fishery to be the more valuable, and conse- 

 quently that which it is better to cultivate with their whole 

 resources. They lay stress upon the fact that the oyster 

 beds, after being closed for three years, were exhausted in 

 a single season, as showing that their productiveness for 

 the future must be doubtful ; and they point out that the 

 mussel crop has been found to be constant, and that the 

 value of the mussels produced during the three years 1873, 

 1874, and 1875, is more than double that of the oysters 

 fished upon the preserved beds. 



These reasons do not appear to me to be altogether 

 satisfactory. It is true that up to the present time the 

 mussels produced within the fishery have been of more 

 value than the oysters ; but mussels spat more regularly 

 than oysters, they breed and are fished at an earlier age, 

 and the results of care are therefore sooner apparent upon 

 mussel scalps than upon oyster beds. In this particular 

 case it is probable that the maximum yield of mussels 

 which can be looked for under the present system of culti- 

 vation has already been obtained. On the other hand, the 

 appearances presented by the oyster beds in 1875 were not 

 unfavourable. Young oysters were found in some quan- 

 tity, spat had fallen in 1873 and 1874, and the water bailiff 

 thinks that if properly looked after the beds would re- 

 stock themselves. That they were fished out in a fortnight 

 only indicates that they had been previously too much 

 exhausted to bear so long a period of fishing, after the 

 short time which had been given to them for revival, and 

 that care ought to be taken to prevent them from being 

 denuded when opened again at a future time. It can 



