1883.] on Oysters and the Oyster Question. 355 



there are ninety-eight beds, and, in 1871-1872, 7,000,000 of full- 

 grown oysters were exported. There could have been very few 

 oysters before 1851, when the first were noticed. But supposing the 

 first entered as early as 1840, then, in thirty years, they spread them- 

 selves over an area of about sixty-four English miles, so that every 

 year, on the average, they advanced more than two miles. The 

 oyster-beds are, at present, three-fifths of a mile to five miles apart, 

 so that the larvae must have been able to wander for at least five 

 miles.* 



During this slow process of immigration, it is obvious that the 

 enemies and the competitors of the oysters had just as good a chance 

 as the oysters themselves; and yet the latter have established them- 

 selves with great success. Why should they be unable to do the like 

 elsewhere ? 



I must confess myself unable to arrive at a conclusion on the 

 question whether what is called " over-dredging " — that is, dredging 

 to the extreme limit at which it is commercially profitable to dredge 

 — is alone competent permanently to destroy an oyster bed or not. 

 That oyster beds have disappeared after they have been much dredged, 

 I do not doubt. But the commonest of all fallacies is the confusion 

 of post hoc with propter hoc ; and I have yet to meet with a case in 

 which it is proved by satisfactory evidence, that an oyster bed has 

 been permanently annihilated by dredging, when the spatting seasons 

 have been good, and when there has been no reason to suspect an 

 inroad of destructive mollusks or starfishes. 



Man intervenes in favour of the oyster by the process which is 

 known as " oyster-culture." This consists in collecting the spat as 

 soon as it has attached itself, and removing it to conveniently-situated 

 natural and artificial shallows, known as " oyster-parks," where it can 

 be protected from its enemies and at the same time nourished. 



Practised at Whitstable and elsewhere from time immemorial, this 

 process has more recently been develojied through laying down fascines 

 of twigs, or tiles, in the way of the oyster larvas during the spatting 

 season. In good spatting years, the quantity of young oysters 

 obtained in this way is prodigious. In 1865, Mr. Nichols, the fore- 

 man of the Whitstable Company, told the Sea Fisheries' Commis- 

 sioners, that, in the year 1858, the spat was very abundant, and that 

 the brood gathered in that and the three following years formed the 

 stock from which the market had ever since been supplied. But he 

 added, that they did not expect a good sjmtting season more than 

 once in every six years ; and that, within his recollection, there had 

 been no spat upon the flats, where it is usually collected for a period 

 of thirteen consecutive years. 



It will be observed that oyster culture is not oyster breeding, but 

 simply a means of profiting by the abundant j^roduce of those years 



* Miibius, ' Die Auster und die Austern-wirthschaft,' p. 52. 



