282 ON OYSTER-CULTURE IN SCOTLAND. 



of sea-bottom to individuals or companies, — despite public use 

 and wont, — as has been recently done in the Thames estuary 

 itself. This being the case, on every ground it is the safer and 

 more certain course to take, for a party of fishermen to combine 

 and plant such a sea-bed, having secured a Government grant 

 therefor. Too much ground should in no case be Q-ranted to 

 any one individual, unless under distinct conditions as to 

 utilisation ; but allowance should be made for a company, more 

 especially of working partners, who would be stimulated to 

 greater exertions when the profit was all their own. 



We should like to have entered more into the question of 

 temperature, and also that of gravity. Our data are, however, 

 not sufficiently reliable or extensive to build any definite 

 theories upon. The estimation of chlorine in our own lochs 

 differs but little from the Atlantic, although there is a consider- 

 able influx of fresh water ; wdiile the figures with which we have 

 been favoured as to other waters, arouse' the suspicion that the 

 samples have been taken from near or upon the surface, where 

 the fresh water would be forced by an advancing tide. A fresh 

 water oyster is much hardier, and better prepared for enduring 

 carriage than a salt water specimen. Severe cold, too, is not 

 injurious to a full growm oyster ; but a low temperature at the 

 time of spatting is apparently fatal. We believe the steady 

 temperature of the deeper waters greatly favours the deposit of 

 spat. 



Various attempts have been made along our shores to start 

 fresh beds, but these have generally ended in failure. This 

 has partly been caused by inattention to the first rules of any 

 " culture," — want of care and nursing — partly from w^ant of 

 knowledge of the conditions of the problem. Thus we under- 

 stand a large quantity of oysters were thrown down in Holy 

 Loch, a district of sea thronged with mussels in myriads — that 

 enemy that chokes the oyster — deep with mud which is con- 

 stantly shifting, and open to the assaults of starfish and sea- 

 urchins, those deadly enemies to the oyster, more especially 

 when in a weak condition. Oysters have also more than once 

 been laid down in Loch Etive unsuccessfully ; but as they were 

 taken from a neighbouring loch with scarcely any fresh water, 

 and transferred at once to a loch remarkable for its variations 

 of gravity and temperature, through the sudden enormous 

 influxes of fresh water from its high and frequently snow-clad 

 watershed, such a result was only natural and to be anticipated, 

 without a much more careful and graduated transfer, so as to 

 acclimatise the shellfish. 



The ovsters of Locli Eoaof, in the Lono; Island, have long been 

 noted for their excellence, and at one time they were very 

 numerous and readily procuraljle. A friend of the writer having 



