THE SHELLFISH INDUSTRY 295 



It was certainly an examination of these by the French 

 ^Professor Coste which resulted eventually in the develop- 

 ment of the great modern French oyster industry. The 

 increasing popularity of oysters among the French in the 

 early nineteenth century led to a more and more intensive 

 fishing of the fine natural oyster beds with which the 

 western coast of France is dotted, and though for many 

 years this seemed to have no effect on the number of 

 oysters collected yet finally the natural rate of increase was 

 overtaken and stocks began to diminish, to such an extent 

 that, to quote but one example, 70,000,000, oysters were 

 dredged in the Bay of Cancale in 1843, and only about 

 1,000,000 from the same locality in 1868 ! All along the 

 coasts of France the oyster beds were depleted in a like 

 fashion, and the government had finally to step in, 

 drastically restricting oyster dredging pending scientific 

 investigations. 



It was the boundless enthusiasm of Professor Coste of 

 the College de France which eventually turned disaster 

 into abiding success. The first experiments consisted 

 merely of attempts to restock the old beds by means of 

 imported oysters. Experiments of this nature carried 

 out near St. Malo in Brittany met with great success, and 

 it was realized, for the first time moreover, that young or 

 "spat" oysters could be collected artificially on fascines 

 or bundles of twigs just as successfully in France as they 

 had been in Italy. To make this clear we must say a little 

 about the life-history of the oyster. The adult oyster is 

 the most sluggish of animals ; fastened to stones or rocks 

 at an early age it is incapable of locomotion and is only 

 moved by currents powerful enough to move the stone to 

 which it is attached. But the young oysters — produced 

 annually in countless millions, for a single oyster may 

 produce millions of eggs in a single season — are unattached 



