OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 469 



months, has itself shown its sense of the inefficiency of the 

 system by replacing the watch boat. 



On the whole, then, it seems to me that, from the 3oth 

 of June, 1879, till the last few weeks, the Company can 

 hardly be said to have existed. The land which it had 

 acquired on its formation was disposed of ; the pier which 

 it had been authorised to build was in ruins ; the tramway 

 which it had been empowered to construct was abandoned ; 

 the boats which it had bought were either sold or laid up 

 at their moorings ; the stock beds had been virtually 

 dredged away ; with the exception of a short interval of a 

 few weeks, no work was done on the ground ; no watch 

 boat was stationed on the ground to ward off poachers ; 

 and the system of watching which was adopted was econo- 

 mical rather than efficient ; no record of the Company's 

 proceedings was made after the joth of October, 1879; 

 and the Company, though it still had a legal existence 

 under its Act, could hardly be said to have been alive. 



I have no desire, either in what I have said or in what 

 I am about to say, to press hardly on the Company ; but it 

 seems to me that its history, from 1876 downwards, resem- 

 bles a career which unfortunately occasionally occurs in 

 private life. From December, 1876, to June, 1879, the 

 Company sustained a precarious existence by realising the 

 scattered remnants of a valuable property. From June, 

 1879, to May, 1 88 1, it had few or no more remnants to 

 realise, and it retired into obscurity. 



I should sincerely regret if it were inferred from the 

 parallel which I have thus drawn that the management of 

 the Company, at any rate its present management, was 

 extravagant. The Company, as it seems to me, owes much 

 of its misfortunes to the exaggerated notions, formed in 

 1864, of the profits of oyster culture. Its managers 



