15 



the large and small are raked and cleaned as carefully as 

 the flowers in any garden plot ; all their life they live 

 under artificial conditions and form perhaps the best and 

 most perfected instance of what can be done by one of 

 the youngest of the sciences — aquiculture, the cultivation 

 of the economic products of the seas and of inland waters. 



As a consequence of the continuous increase in the 

 success obtained by the adoption of the new methods, the 

 French Government in 1872 decided that their duties of 

 tutelage might cease, the new industry having advanced 

 to a degree of perfection which enabled it to walk alone 

 for the future ; accordingly they made over to the 

 Societe central dc sauvetage, the French equivalent, 

 I believe, of our National Life-boat Institution, the whole 

 of the Government experimental oyster farms then 

 containing more than three millions of tiles. 



Thanks to millions of foreign oysters imported into 

 the basin to furnish spat for culture purposes between 

 1859 and 1865, the old oyster beds in the channels and 

 on unoccupied flats improved greatly ; something of their 

 former prosperity was eventually restored to them. The 

 authorities, warned by the past, guarded these natural 

 beds with the greatest rigour ; fishing upon them was 

 interdicted except on days and at the hours specified 

 after an annual examination by a local commission of 

 experts. Usually the fishing was limited to one or at 

 the most two days per annum and all cultch and im- 

 mature oysters had to be returned to the beds. From 

 i860 to 1872 these public beds or common grounds as 

 we call them in England gave more than 80,000,000 

 oysters obtained partly by the dredge in the channels, 

 partly by hand collection on the flats. In several years 

 the value of the oysters fished amounted to over 150,000 

 francs. 



From 1872 as oyster culture extended and became 

 reduced gradually to an exact science with results sur- 

 passing the most optimistic anticipations, less and less 

 attention was given to the fishery on the common 

 grounds ; this comparative neglect proved detrimental 



