OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 447 



enough, it also secures that oysters shall not be removed 

 till after they have had an opportunity of spatting. It 

 may be suspected that the opinion of dredgermen and 

 merchants as to the limit of size best suited to a particular 

 fishery is often dictated by too exclusive attention to the 

 first of these effects, which may be fully produced before 

 the oyster has arrived at the usual spatting age ; but it is 

 evident that, from the point of view of the public interests, 

 it is immaterial in what proportion the price of an 

 oyster is shared between the different persons concerned 

 in its breeding, growing, fattening, and placing in the 

 market. It is essential only that as many as possible shall 

 be reared ; such preservative measures ought, therefore, to 

 be taken as are calculated to guarantee the existence 

 until after the age at which breeding takes place of 

 the largest possible proportion of young produced at 

 a given time, if the ground is not at that time suffi- 

 ciently stocked, or if it is sufficiently stocked, of enough 

 young to maintain the number of oysters at its actual 

 level. judged by this rule, the limit of size fixed in 

 the Swansea Order is clearly inadequate. On the Swansea 

 ground oysters are large and of quick growth. At four 

 years old their average diameter is about four inches ; at 

 three years old, when, according to the dredgermen, they 

 begin to spat, their breadth approaches three inches ; and 

 in the autumn after they reach an age of two years, they 

 will not pass through a z-inch ring ; indeed I saw some 

 specimens about a year-and-a-half old which measured 2^- 

 inches. In the common course of trade, oysters of all sizes 

 are dredged in the autumn by the fishermen, and are sold 

 to merchants, who place them in storing beds made upon 

 the foreshore. There they remain till the spring, when they 

 are for the most part bought by London merchants to be 



