36 
»under-sized« oysters, 37/,—4 inches or more and certainly 5—6 or 7—8 years 
old«. It will be remembered that it was just under his régime that the Govern- 
ment reduced the standard from 3 to 2!/, inches; and it was he who proposed 
the introduction of quite a new race of oysters into the Lim Fjord. To these 
older statements regarding the quality of the oysters I shall only remark, either 
that the judgment must have been wrong, just because they were only tested in 
the summer, or that the oysters have improved since then; the quality now is 
good except in one or two years and naturally in the summer, and then the qua- 
lity is not good both of the large and the somewhat smaller. The fjord cannot 
always offer such good oysters as the best Dutch, and the dark gills especially are 
a drawback for many; but that there should be a difference in quality in the 
oysters from the Lim Fjord, when 3 or 25/, inches, I refuse to admit; it is in 
any case a matter of taste, and if both kinds could find buyers — that is 
the main thing. I believe that it is in these small matters of taste, that we 
must seek for the reasons for the high standard and not in a concern for the pre- 
servation of the stock, and it was in my opinion therefore doubly unfortunate, 
that the fishery was completely stopped in 1886 from a fear of overfishing; there 
was in reality no danger of this, and we did not learn how great a production of 
the smaller, but saleable oysters the fjord was capable of. For every cm. the 
standard is reduced from the present 8—9 cm., the fjord will perhaps be able to 
give just, as many times as large an output. I would repeat, that the Govern- 
ment in 1860 endeavoured to act upon this principle; to have departed from it is 
unfortunate. ÅA reduction of the standard from 8 to 7 cm. would be of great 
importance for the production; and with this we might well be content for the 
time being; results would not fail to appear, so extremely little is required here in 
the matter of the average size of the oysters. If the fishery had at that time 
been completely stopped on some good banks, e.g. on !/,,th of the area, distri- 
buted throughout the whole of the fjord, so that they might have served as 
reserve or culture banks from which the spat could have been obtained for the 
whole of the fjord, whilst dredging was permitted on all the other banks without 
any standard size for the oysters, then we should now know more than we do of 
what the fjord can produce in the way of young, rapidly growing oysters. Here 
»closed waters« would have been of use, since the oysters really spawn in them 
— on the other hand fishes as a rule do not! 
Under the remarks to a proposed law draughted by the Government for 
a temporary closure of the oyster fishery in the Lim Fjord (»Ordentl. Samling« 
1885), we find: »It was thus not known whether »too much dredging« or »unknown 
causes« had led to the decrease«. But something would have been known if the 
proposed »experimental closure of the banks in certain large areas of the fjord« 
had only been carried out; since if many oysters had been taken on the closed 
but not on the dredged banks, then the »unknown causes« would have been eli- 
minated; if on the other hand the stock became reduced everywhere, it would 
then have been shown that the closure was of no use. But complete closure was 
enforced for 4 years, with the result that after its termination no more oysters 
were fished than before the closure; within recent years however some few hundred 
thousands more have been fished (see Appendix I p. 20). We thus do not know 
