IO 



thereon a quantity of oysters collected from the channels. 

 This venture unfortunately was made during a bad year 

 when floods were exceptionally great ; the oysters died off 

 from doncain or fresh-water sickness ; in disgust the 

 holder renounced his concession. This failure still further 

 disinclined the former oyster fishers to risk time and 

 money in parkage experiments and it required the 

 enthusiasm and surprisingly great initial success of Coste 

 in his experiments on the coast of Brittany to overcome 

 this very natural caution and to inaugurate the new era ; 

 indeed it was high time seeing that in 1858 the total 

 produce of the natural oyster beds of the basin had 

 dwindled in value to less than a total of 1,000 francs 

 although the price has risen to 3 francs per 100! 



Coste, whose guidance in this new development was 

 all important, was originally a professor in the College 

 de France who, in view of the exhaustion of the French 

 oyster beds, was commissioned by Government about 

 1853 to investigate the oyster question and to report upon 

 the advisability of employing artificial methods of 

 regeneration; especially was he to see whether the means 

 which the Italians employed to propagate oysters in Lake 

 Fusaro might not be applied in the French coastal 

 lagoons. What he saw in Italy fired his enthusiasm ; he 

 came back as the apostle of Italian methods and in 

 glowing pages set forth the prosperity that was about to 

 dawn on the French oyster culture industry. His 

 description of the Lake Fusaro methods was read with 

 avidity in every oyster depopulated locality ; many were 

 convinced and within the next five years numerous 

 experiments were in progress independently at various 

 centres. The first trials of the new system consisted in 

 the main of anchoring bundles of brushwood or fascines 

 as spat-collectors over the bottom in suitable bays where 

 a stock of parent oysters had been previously laid down. 

 The earliest experiments carried out by de Bon at St. 

 Servan at the mouth of the River Ranee were a brilliant 

 success giving within two years of the inception a revenue 

 to the local fishermen of over 35,000 francs. Until the 



