674 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 



point these people — our masters in the art of cultivating the waters — 

 to the progress which oyster-culture has made upon our coast. 



Undoubtedly the cultivation of the oyster was practiced long ago, 

 and wherever this shell-fish holds a position more or less important as 

 a food resource, its artificial rearing has engaged attention, but it has 

 not become, as with us, a systematized industry.* 



It is fitting I should declare that the Department of the Marine has 

 dowered France with the industry of oyster-culture. To it belongs the 

 credit of the first attemjits and of perseverance in the enterprise, as 

 well as the honor of the results to which this report bears testimony. 



The idea of establishing special devices to arrest and preserve the 

 spawn which the oysters permit to escape into the water during the 

 period of gestation is comparatively recent. It originated with a dis- 

 tinguished officer of your administration, who has given to it practical 

 realization. 



In 1851, when M. Coste visited the oyster establishments of Lake Fu- 

 saro and found in progress there some timid and irregular attempts at 

 oyster-culture, M. de Bon, then Commissioner of the Marine and chief 

 of the service at Saint-Servan, was engaged in the re-establishment of 

 the oyster-beds at the mouth of the Eance and in the roadstead of Saint- 

 Malo, by means of oysters brought from the natural beds in the Bay of 

 (Jancale. He carried on these attempts with great i)erseverance and his 

 efforts were crowned with success. He demonstrated a fact of the great- 

 est importance to the new science, and which up to that time had been 

 doubted, viz, that the oyster was capable of reproducing itself in loca- 

 tions which were laid bare at low water {terrains emergents), and that 

 it was possible to obtain a harvest of spawn from them. To confirm 

 this discovery M. de Bon himself established a ijarc for experimental 

 investigation, in which he conducted a series of experiments to ascertain 

 the best means of securing the spawn. He devised apparatus for col- 

 lecting it, and very soon he forwarded to the minister a spawn collector 

 of his invention covered with young oysters. A detailed report accom- 

 panied it and afforded a demonstration that was unanswerable.t 



The complete success of these experiments was announced by M. 

 Coste in a report dated February 5, 1858, and inserted in the Moniteur 

 of the 28th of June following. 



It is proper here to give an account of the part borne by M. Coste, 

 professor in the College of France, in the inauguration of the new iu- 

 dustrj^ 



In traversing the coast upon a mission of the Emperor, who had 

 directed him to conduct a series of experiments in regard to marine 

 pisciculture, this illustrious embryologist visited Saint-Servan in the 

 month of August, 1857. There he found the cultivation of the oyster 



* Report of M. de Bon, Commissary-General of the Marine, on the condition of oys- 

 ter culture in 1875. 



t See the note inserted in the Moniteur Universel of October 8, 1859. 



